Tim Wise (L) and Laura Flanders during their interview. [Source: GRIT TV / Nation of Change (.org)]Progressive author and columnist Laura Flanders interviews author and activist Tim Wise, an expert on white supremacist ideology and movements. They begin by discussing President Obama’s incremental, “race-neutral” approach to solving racial problems in America, agreeing that Obama tends to believe that racial problems can best be alleviated by economic solutions. However, Wise says, “racial disparities that are caused by racial discrimination—by race-specific injury—can’t be solved with race-neutral analysis or race-neutral policy.” Wise says that long-term studies show that the single biggest reason why support for social safety-net programs has dropped so steadily in America over the last few decades has been the perception that those programs will be abused by minorities, a perception Wise says is shaped in part by racist beliefs. Ironically, that lack of citizen support, which has translated into a lack of governmental support, means that when white Americans need those programs themselves, they do not get the services they require; in the last decade, many more whites have begun to suffer economic plights, and they now need the programs they have largely opposed. Wise says that the liberal strategy of ignoring racism from the right, pretending it does not exist, and/or trying to “rise above it,” just gives the implied racism of conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and many “tea party” activists that much more influence and power. The more the idea of racism is openly addressed, Wise says, the less effective racial overtones and implications are in politics. Historically, Wise says, white Americans strongly support federally funded social programs as long as they do not perceive minorities as being the primary beneficiaries of those programs. After 1971-72, he says, the media began portraying the recipients of welfare, Medicaid, and other safety-net programs as largely African-American. Before, he says, the media usually showed whites in Appalachia, for example, with whites standing in soup-kitchen lines and so forth. When the media began portraying safety-net recipients as mostly minorities, white support of those programs began to plummet. Flanders turns the conversation to the “tea party” movement, and, after citing Wise’s recent article, “Imagine If the Tea Party Was Black” (see April 25, 2010), she asks about the racism that infuses much of the tea party’s ideology and activism (see April 25, 2010). Obviously, Wise says, if tea partiers were black, “they wouldn’t be able to surround lawmakers and scream at them at the top of their lungs like petulant children.” Even if one does not accept the allegations of racial slurs and spitting that have been made against tea partiers (see March 20, 2010), which Wise does accept as true, “just the notion that a thousand white people can get around a bunch of lawmakers, some of whom are white and some of whom are of color, and scream and yell at them and tell them how to vote…” It is inconceivable that black protesters and activists could “get away with that,” he says, “without being seen as criminals.” And the idea of Arab-Americans or Latinos trying to do something similar, he says, is even harder to conceive, he says: Arab-Americans would be vilified as terrorists, and Latinos would be smeared as illegal aliens. The political impact of the tea partiers has been far stronger than anything black and other minority civil rights and political pressure groups have been able to bring to bear. “In every sense,” he says, “the tea party is able to get away with things—say things, do things, make the kinds of statements about public leaders and officials—that no group of color could ever possibly do.” [GRIT TV, 9/25/2010]

Clockwise from upper left: Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee. [Source: Huffington Post]The online news site Politico publishes an analysis of Fox News’s choice to actively and openly promote four of its paid contributors—Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee—as viable candidates for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. “How does a news organization cover White House hopefuls when so many are on the payroll?” ask reporters Jonathan Martin and Keach Hagey. “With the exception of Mitt Romney [R-MA], Fox now has deals with every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office,” they write, and note that Fox’s competitors are expressing increasing frustration at their inability to interview any of Fox’s contributors. Some Republican insiders, they write, are calling the four “the Fox candidates.” It is “uncertain how other news organizations can cover the early stages of the presidential race when some of the main GOP contenders are contractually forbidden to appear on any TV network besides Fox,” the reporters note. C-SPAN political editor Steve Scully recently said that his network was denied an interview with Palin because Fox refused to give permission for her to appear on a “rival” network (C-SPAN is a government-funded news outlet that is considered relentlessly non-partisan). And, the reporters write, “Producers at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC all report similar experiences.” Martin and Hagey write that the issue is one of basic “journalistic fairness and propriety,” and continue: “With Fox effectively becoming the flagship network of the right and, more specifically, the tea party movement, the four Republicans it employs enjoy an unparalleled platform from which to speak directly to primary voters who will determine the party’s next nominee. Their Fox jobs allow these politicians an opportunity to send conservative activists a mostly unfiltered message in what is almost always a friendly environment. Fox opinion hosts typically invite the Republicans simply to offer their views on issues of the day, rather than press them to defend their rhetoric or records as leaders of the party.” Fox News has said that once any of the four officially declare their candidacy for president, they will have to sever their contract with the network, but, the reporters note, Fox News is “such a lucrative and powerful pulpit that Palin, Gingrich, Santorum, and Huckabee have every reason to delay formal announcements and stay on contract for as long as they can.” Palin, for one, is already appearing in many early primary states, giving the strong impression that she is either preparing for a presidential run herself or laying the groundwork for a major role as a supporter of another candidate. However, Fox News isn’t saying one way or the other, and because of her exclusive contract with Fox, no other network reporter can ask Palin about her plans. As of late September 2010, only Gingrich has appeared on any other network, having made two appearances on ABC and three on NBC since January. He and the other “Fox candidates” have appeared dozens of times on Fox News during this time period. “The idea of the four prospects—and especially the former Alaska governor—facing media questions only on a network that both pays them and offers limited scrutiny has already become a matter of frustration in the political and journalistic community,” Martin and Hagey write. Within Fox News, there are some officials who have spoken anonymously about their unease at the idea of paying candidates they are supposed to cover. As yet, no one in senior management has instructed Fox News reporters on how to treat their colleagues and presumed presidential contenders. “The cold reality is, nobody at the reporter level has any say on this,” says a source familiar with the situation. “They’re left in the lurch.” And potential candidates who do not work at Fox are beginning to chafe at the disparate amount of coverage granted them by the network. One aide to an unnamed Republican considering a run for the presidency told a Fox employee, “I wish we could get that much airtime, but, oh yeah, we don’t get a paycheck.” Republican strategist Jim Dyke, who is not currently working for any potential 2012 GOP candidate, says that after the November midterm elections, the issue will become more visible. “As it becomes clear somebody is looking at running, Fox gets into a bit of a box because doesn’t it become an in-kind contribution if they’re being paid?” he asks. For her part, Palin seems quite comfortable staying exclusively within the friendly environs of Fox News, and has even advised other Republican candidates for office to “[s]peak through Fox News” (see September 15-16, 2010). [Politico, 9/27/2010]

Online supporters of Sarah Palin (R-PA) threaten to murder a young, mentally unstable fellow supporter after Palin and a friend file a restraining order against the man. Palin and her friend, Kristan Cole, have filed 20-day restraining orders against Shawn Christy, an 18-year-old Pennsylvania resident; in the court filing, Palin says that in telephone and written communications with her staff, Christy threatened to track her down at her book signings in the continental US, warned her “that she better watch her back,” said he was buying a one-way ticket to Alaska, and sent her a gun-purchase receipt. “Bottom line is, he is crazy and could kill me,” Palin tells the court. “He wants me dead.” The court filings state that Palin and Cole believe Christy to be “delusional.” Offers to Kill Him with 'Liberal Lead' - On September 28, the Mat-Su Frontiersman, the local newspaper for Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, publishes the story of Christy’s threats and the restraining orders. Within hours, Palin supporters repost and comment on the story. The Frontiersman is forced to delete “many comments” made on its pages “because they suggested hunting Christy and killing him.” Some Palin supporters ask the paper to post a picture of Christy so that “‘decent’ people could hunt him down and kill him.” The paper’s editorial board writes, “We were shocked at the number of people from across the US calling for his death and offering to pull the trigger on a .45 loaded with ‘liberal lead’”—apparently bullets being saved for shooting liberals—and says it would not publish such a picture to protect Christy from potential harm. Despite his obvious threats, Christy is a Palin supporter who has donated to her political action committee, and spent his savings to buy a $200 ticket to an August 27 event in Pennsylvania featuring her as a speaker. He is also known to have made multiple threats against President Obama, Obama’s 2008 Republican challenger John McCain (R-AZ), against Palin, and against numerous local officials. Investigated but Never Charged - Christy has been investigated by the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Capitol Police, and has been extensively interviewed, but has never been charged nor arrested. The Frontiersman describes him as “a young fan obsessed and then frustrated because he wanted to make contact with the Palins and be part of their phenomenon,” and notes that he has admitted being “in the wrong” for making his threats. The editors then write: “But on our Web page, readers have tried, convicted, and sentenced Christy.… There is no crime this young man could have committed, been charged with, and convicted for that would give anyone the right to hunt and kill him as so many of the commentors suggested. We wish the dozens of people who posted threats on our Web site—surely many much older than Shawn—could see that as clearly.” Christy’s father has said his son is being examined for possible psychiatric issues. Police from neighboring districts have been assigned to the Christy home to protect him from the wave of death threats he and his family are receiving. [District/Superior Court for the State of Alaska, 9/27/2010 ; Mat-Su Frontiersman, 9/30/2010; Mat-Su Frontiersman, 9/30/2010; Scranton Times-Tribune, 9/30/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/1/2010]Palin 'Commands Forces ... Truly Terrifying and Violent' - Andrew Sullivan, a conservative columnist for The Atlantic, writes that Palin’s restraining order is “completely appropriate and understandable,” and Christy is “obviously unstable.” Sullivan then goes on to note: “[T]his story does reveal some of the virulence and anger and violence that lies beneath what has become a political cult.… This woman commands forces out there that are truly terrifying and violent. If you want to know why so much about her is still unknown, you do not understand the fear her followers and acolytes command in her native Alaska. That fear is real; and it is not without reason.” [Atlantic Monthly, 10/3/2010]

President Obama says that Fox News “has a very clear, undeniable point of view” that “is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth” of the country. Obama says: “The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like [William Randolph] Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition—it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch [Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corporation, Fox News’s parent company] what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.” [Rolling Stone, 9/28/2010]

In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone magazine, President Obama says that he believes the loose amalgamation of groups and organizations under the “tea party” rubric is “still defining itself.” Obama says: “I think the tea party is an amalgam, a mixed bag of a lot of different strains in American politics that have been there for a long time. There are some strong and sincere libertarians who are in the tea party who generally don’t believe in government intervention in the market or socially. There are some social conservatives in the tea party who are rejecting me the same way they rejected Bill Clinton, the same way they would reject any Democratic president as being too liberal or too progressive. There are strains in the tea party that are troubled by what they saw as a series of instances in which the middle-class and working-class people have been abused or hurt by special interests and Washington, but their anger is misdirected. And then there are probably some aspects of the tea party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president. So I think it’s hard to characterize the tea party as a whole, and I think it’s still defining itself.” Asked how the tea parties are being financed, Obama says: “There’s no doubt that the infrastructure and the financing of the tea party come from some very traditional, very powerful, special-interest lobbies. I don’t think this is a secret. Dick Armey and FreedomWorks (see May 16, 2008, April 14, 2009, and April 15, 2009), which was one of the first organizational mechanisms to bring tea party folks together, are financed by very conservative industries and forces that are opposed to enforcement of environmental laws, that are opposed to an energy policy that would be different than the fossil-fuel-based approach we’ve been taking, that don’t believe in regulations that protect workers from safety violations in the workplace, that want to make sure that we are not regulating the financial industries in ways that we have. There’s no doubt that there is genuine anger, frustration, and anxiety in the public at large about the worst financial crisis we’ve experienced since the Great Depression. Part of what we have to keep in mind here is this recession is worse than the Ronald Reagan recession of the eighties, the 1990-91 recession, and the 2001 recession combined. The depths of it have been profound. This body politic took a big hit in the gut, and that always roils up our politics, and can make people angry. But because of the ability of a lot of very well-funded groups to point that anger—I think misdirect that anger—it is translating into a relevant political force in this election.” [Rolling Stone, 9/28/2010]

Los Angeles Times columnist James Rainey discusses Fox News’s relentless promotion of its own employees for presidential office (see October 26, 2009 and September 27, 2010). Rainey notes that Fox contributors Sarah Palin (R-AK), Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Rick Santorum (R-PA), and Mike Huckabee (R-TN) are all using their appearances on Fox to groom themselves for the 2012 presidential race, with the apparent blessing and collusion of Fox News. Rainey writes, with some apparent sarcasm, “It’s easy to get news coverage, it turns out, when you work for a news company!” Other Republicans attempting to build momentum for their own 2012 bid, such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, are being “shut out” of Fox’s promotional campaign. And other news networks—even C-SPAN—rarely get to interview Palin, Gingrich, Santorum, and Huckabee, as they are all under exclusive contract with Fox and do not appear on competing news providers. Some Republicans are discomfited by this situation, but, Rainey writes, they are “ma[king] their complaints quietly, lest they anger the powers at Fox.” Rainey goes on to note that the story is getting little attention outside political circles, “[b]ecause the information juggernaut built by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, once a GOP attack dog and now head of Fox News, has been tilting the playing field for so long, so persistently, and denying its bias so shamelessly that it’s created an alternate reality.” Rainey notes that Fox parent News Corp’s unprecedented multi-million dollar donations to Republican causes (see June 24, 2010 and After and September 30, 2010) have drawn relatively little criticism, even as Fox’s supposedly unbiased and nonpartisan news anchors and personalities (not its prime-time opinion makers) “routinely pound away at conservative talking points.” The other news networks spend their time on regular stories, Rainey writes, but Fox News spends so much “straight news” time covering non-existent “scandals” and promoting conservative causes that, in essence, it has created a conservative-friendly “alternate reality” for itself and its ideological colleagues. “One doesn’t even blink with surprise anymore when a Fox opinion program rolls out black-and-white newsreel footage of fascists,” he writes, “and with uniformly straight faces suggest that the Obama administration has America on the brink of a similar calamity.” Rainey rebuts claims that Fox News is merely countering the “shamelessly liberal” viewpoints of CNN and MSNBC. CNN, he writes, “has hewed relentlessly to the he-said-she said reporting imperative of old. The 24-hour news pioneer puts on alternative viewpoints, and not merely as whipping objects for ideological hosts. It’s aired multiple segments dissecting President Obama, his economic policies, and his plans for Afghanistan.” As for MSNBC, while its opinion shows are hosted by liberals, and Rainey believes that in some sense MSNBC may be trying to be a liberal version of Fox, its news broadcasts are relatively non-partisan. [Los Angeles Times, 9/29/2010]

Fox News host Glenn Beck says President Obama has surrounded himself with “radical Marxists” and “militant communists.” Beck tells his viewers: “The president has aligned himself with these radical socialists. Fact. They’re radical Marxists. They’re militant communists. Fact.… [T]he fact is, you cannot be with radical socialist, communists and be also, you know, mom and Chevrolet and apple pie and baseball, you—you can’t. It’s one or the other. That’s the fact.” [Media Matters, 11/17/2010]

The press learns that News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, has donated $1 million to the US Chamber of Commerce, one of the heaviest anti-Democratic advertisers in the 2010 midterm election campaigns. News Corp. previously donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA—see June 24, 2010 and After), drawing criticism that its chairman Rupert Murdoch, and by extension Fox News and the other media outlets owned by Murdoch’s corporation (including the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal) are violating basic tenets of journalistic ethics by donating money to only one side in an election season. Fox News officials say they knew nothing of the donation until they learned of it through news reports. White House adviser David Axelrod says that while he believes Fox executives did not know of the donation, “it certainly sends a signal as to what the corporate position is.… If you’re pushing a point of view there, you wouldn’t take it as a disincentive to keep going.” The Democratic National Committee says in a statement, “What these contributions make clear is that the Republican Party is a division of News Corp., just as Fox News is a division of News Corp.” The Chamber of Commerce has promised to spend up to $75 million in anti-Democratic, pro-Republican campaign advertisements. [Politico, 9/30/2010; New York Times, 10/1/2010] Politico notes: “The parent companies of other media companies such as Disney (which owns ABC) and General Electric (which owns NBC) have also made political contributions, but typically in far smaller chunks, and split between Democrats and Republicans. In the past, News Corp. has also spread its donations between candidates of both parties.” [Politico, 9/30/2010]

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), responding to news of a second million-dollar donation to Republican causes by the parent corporation of Fox News (see June 24, 2010 and After and September 30, 2010), says that the donations may shift the way Fox News is perceived by the rest of the mainstream media and perhaps even the public. CJR’s Zachary Roth writes, “Until now, the rest of the media has largely treated Fox News as one of its own,” with other reporters defending Fox when it has been criticized by Obama officials and others. But, Roth writes, in making the donation, Fox News’s parent corporation News Corp. “has largely dropped the pretense” of being anything except a partisan enterprise. Roth notes that Los Angeles Times columnist James Rainey has written of a “new order” in which “Fox’s supposed news personalities—not just its prime-time opinion makers—routinely pound away at conservative talking points” (see September 29, 2010). And he cites Ben Smith of Politico, an online news provider often considered to tilt conservative, as advising fellow reporters to cover Fox “as the political actors they often are,” adding that “reporters don’t have to take Fox at its word on its own ‘balance’ any more than we have to take a politician at his word.” Roth concludes: “Wringing one’s hands at the decline of ‘objective’ journalism misses the point, because Fox can and will continue to do what it wants. What’s important, if only for the sake of simple accuracy, is simply that Fox comes to be seen for what it is. And it’s at least possible that this week’s news will start to make that happen.” [Politico, 9/29/2010; Columbia Journalism Review, 10/1/2010]

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, in an examination of Fox News host Glenn Beck’s slippery grasp of history, notes that Beck routinely invokes Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and former US President Woodrow Wilson in comparisons to President Obama. Beck has accused Obama and his administration of supporting “eugenics” similar to those advocated by some Nazis (see May 13, 2009), claimed that Obama, like the Nazis, believes in enforced sterilization, claimed that Obama would create “death panels” to decide who lives and dies under his health care reform proposals (see August 10, 2009), told his viewers to “read Mein Kampf” if they want to understand Obama’s ideology, repeatedly accused the Obama administration of “fascism” (see September 29, 2009), claimed the Obama “brownshirts” were readying a strategy to arrest Beck and other Fox News personnel in an attempt to shut down the network, accused the United Nations of “Nazism” in pursuing efforts to curb global warming, said Obama wanted to create his own version of the SS and Hitler Youth in revamping and expanding AmeriCorps (see March 31, 2009), and more. Milbank notes that Beck either gives no evidence whatsoever to bolster his claims, or gives evidence that is either misrepresented or entirely false. Milbank writes: “Beck, it seems, has a Nazi fetish. In his first 18 months on Fox News, from early 2009 through the middle of this year, he and his guests invoked Hitler 147 times. Nazis, an additional 202 times. Fascism or fascists, 193 times. The Holocaust got 76 mentions, and Joseph Goebbels got 24. And these mentions are usually in reference to Obama.” As for Wilson, Beck routinely labels the former president a “racist” “horror show” who was “the spookiest president we ever had,” usually in preparation for comparing him to Obama. [Washington Post, 10/3/2010] Six weeks later, Fox News president Roger Ailes, defending Beck, will tell an interviewer that Milbank should be “beheaded” for criticizing Beck (see November 17-18, 2010).

American Third Position party members take part in a ‘tea party’ rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. [Source: American Third Position]Members of the white supremacist American Third Position political party (A3P—see October 15, 2009 and After) participate in a “tea party” rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The A3P activists are led by Pennsylvania party chairman Steve Smith. According to the A3P Web site, the A3P members “presented the A3P perspective on the issues that concerned a crowd of Scranton Tea Party conservatives: taxation, government spending, and proper representation.… The policies and platform of the A3P were effectively delivered to the event attendees through personal conversation and the distribution of party literature.” Smith later says: “We explained that the A3P was formed to represent white Americans, who have been denied representation for decades.… The A3P will cut programs that encourage unproductiveness, and paired with our policy toward immigration, will end the benefits that encourage illegal aliens to stick around against our wishes. We will also put a cap on government spending. The A3P believes in a policy of protectionism rather than globalization and will nurture start-up businesses, foster growth in existing businesses, and protect against unfair imports.” Of the tea party movement, he says: “The Tea Parties are fertile ground for our activists. Tea Party supporters and the A3P share much common ground with regard to our political agendas. Through our face to face conversations and literature distributions, our activists brought our message to the Tea Party supporters. We provided them with a true alternative to the typical dead-end conservatism with which so many of these concerned and partially awakened Americans are involved. So many patriots find themselves supporting any group or organization which challenges the evil nature of the current corrupt establishment, even if they do not touch on the true issues.… Based on the very enthusiastic reception of the Tea Partiers to our message, the A3P provides the answers they need.” [American Third Position, 10/11/2010]

Martha Dean. [Source: Connecticut Political Reporter]Connecticut attorney general candidate Martha Dean, a Republican lawyer, says state governments should be able to ignore federal laws if their lawmakers so choose, even if the US Supreme Court rules the laws constitutional. In some instances, “the Supreme Court is just wrong, so what option does the state have?” Dean says. “They have the option of nullification.” “Nullification” is the idea that the Tenth Amendment gives the states the power to “nullify,” or override, federal law. [The Day, 10/14/2010] The concept gained national notoriety in 1830, when Vice President John C. Calhoun set off the so-called “Nullification Crisis” that almost led to an armed conflict between South Carolina and the rest of the nation, and helped set the stage for the Civil War 30 years later. It came to the fore again in 1956, when segregationists attempted to use the concept to persuade state leaders to ignore the Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, that mandated the desegregation of public schools (see March 12, 1956 and After); Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus attempted to invoke “nullification” when he resisted orders to integrate Little Rock public schools, an effort that was shut down by unanimous rulings of the Court. Article 6 of the Constitution states that acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land… anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Founding father James Madison argued that nullification would “speedily put an end to the Union itself” by allowing federal laws to be freely ignored by states. [Constitution (.org), 8/28/1830; Think Progress, 9/27/2010; The Day, 10/14/2010] Dean says the doctrine of “nullification” is valid and viable, saying: “This is a tool that has existed. It is a tool that isn’t often used. It isn’t often needed.” She says that when state officials such as herself, or elected governors or lawmakers, feel the federal government’s laws surpass Tenth Amendment limitations, then Connecticut and other states should nullify those laws. Dean says her position is controversial only to “the left.” However, the idea has been used for centuries by anti-government activists, most memorably during the run-up to the Civil War and the battle over civil rights for African-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Law professor Richard Kay says the idea is entirely invalid. “This was a very plausible argument up until 1865,” Kay says. “But after the Civil War, what was a genuine argument about the nature of the American constitutional system was pretty decisively decided. Since 1865 it’s pretty much a settled matter, with some rare fringe arguments to the contrary. The question of who has the ultimate authority to interpret the Constitution was settled” in favor of the US Supreme Court. The idea that the Constitution is not an ultimately binding authoritative document, but merely an agreement between autonomous states—the core of “nullification”—has always been “very controversial,” Kay notes, and has been rejected by the Supreme Court since 1819. Dean states that the Court’s decisions have been twisted by “liberal law professors,” and rejects the idea that the US Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality. Her opponent, Democrat George Jepsen, says her idea would lead to chaos. If states can simply refuse to abide by the rulings of the Supreme Court, federal statutes themselves would become unenforceable, he says, and there would be nothing to stop states from seceding altogether. “The point is that we have one Constitution and there needs to be one place that defines what that Constitution means,” Jepsen says. “Under nullification, any state legislature, any state governor could declare that a law is unconstitutional. That would send us onto a course where there would be 50 different unique interpretations of a federal statute. We would cease to be a united nation.” Jepsen calls Dean’s views “extreme.” Dean contends that the idea would not necessarily threaten the Union, and says, “It’s been worked out in the past.” She goes on to say that “I don’t think desegregation was really controversial aside from a few states in the South.” Kay says Dean’s views were quite mainstream in 1842, but not since then. [The Day, 10/14/2010] After being challenged by a constitutional scholar, Dean cites the work of a neo-Confederate segregationist as further support of her position (see October 14, 2010). Jepsen will defeat Dean in the general election, beating back an election-eve attempt by her to challenge his credentials to serve as attorney general. [Hartford Courant, 11/3/2010]

Brooke Obie of the Constitutional Accountability Center attacks a recent statement of position by Connecticut attorney general candidate Martha Dean, who advocates the concept of “nullification”—the idea that states can ignore or override federal laws if they so choose (see October 14, 2010). Obie says Dean’s position is a “dangerous” claim that ignores the fundamental precepts of the US Constitution and every relevant court decision since before the Civil War. Articles III and VI of the Constitution explicitly place federal law over states’ laws, and place the Supreme Court firmly in the position of being the final arbiter of whether a federal law is unconstitutional. “It is disturbing that Dean, seeking office as a state’s chief lawyer, said in the interview that she does not ‘accept’ that the Supreme Court has this authority,” Obie writes, and refers Dean to the first Chief Justice, John Marshall, who wrote that “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Nullification is “completely unconstitutional,” Obie writes, and has been used to bring about “some of the most divisive moments in our history: from the attempted destruction of our great nation by secessionists in the 19th century, to the dividing of people by segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s. Encouraging such backsliding of America into its darkest days is an extremely dangerous position for anyone to take, let alone someone seeking to become a state attorney general.” [Constitutional Accountability Center, 10/14/2010] In the comments section of Obie’s article, Dean reprints a post from Thomas Woods that Woods posted on his blog in response to Obie. Woods is a pro-Confederate segregationist. Woods calls Obie’s work a “fifth-grade research paper masquerading as a critique of Martha Dean,” and goes on to say that “[a]lmost every single sentence in this post is wrong. Your view of the Supremacy Clause is wrong, your view of Article III is grotesquely wrong, your summary of the history of nullification is absurd, and your comment about secessionists makes no sense. South Carolina was complaining that the NORTH was nullifying too much. Talk about getting the history exactly backwards!” He compares Obie’s views to “progressives,” neoconservatives, and Adolf Hitler. Think Progress’s legal expert Ian Millhiser later notes that Woods is a co-founder of the neo-Confederate League of the South, and has called the Civil War a battle between “atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other,” contending that the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865 was “[t]he real watershed from which we can trace many of the destructive trends that continue to ravage our civilization today.” Dean has cited Woods before, in one debate reading aloud from his book in support of nullification. Woods is a prolific contributor to the far-right Tenth Amendment Center, a pro-nullification group which pushes political candidates to sign a pledge promising to nullify federal laws such as Social Security and Medicare which do not comply with their “tenther” view of the Constitution. [Constitutional Accountability Center, 10/14/2010; Think Progress, 10/19/2010]

Two Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, teenagers, Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak, are convicted of violating Luis Ramirez’s civil rights when they beat and kicked him to death in what prosecutors call a racially motivated crime (see July 12, 2008 and After). The two were acquitted of all but the lightest charges in a local trial (see May 2, 2009 and After), but a subsequent investigation by the FBI led to charges against the two teenagers and three local law enforcement officers whom the FBI says covered up the specifics of the murder (see December 15, 2009). Both teenagers face life sentences. Schuykill County District Attorney James P. Goodman took the case away from Shenandoah police officers and had his own detectives bring it to court; observers credit Goodman’s detectives with making a far stronger case against Piekarsky and Donchak than the Shenandoah police officers presented in the first trial. [Hazleton Standard Speaker, 1/28/2011] After the first trial, Goodman said he thought the Shenandoah police officers had “compromised” the case from the outset. He told a CNN reporter: “They didn’t interview the perpetrators, the boys. In fact, not only did they not interview them, they picked them up, gave them rides, helped them concoct stories, brought them back, and told the boys what to say.… It’s clear they were trying to help these boys out, for whatever reason—they were football players, these police officers were trying to help these boys out and limit their involvement in the death of Luis Ramirez.” [CNN, 12/17/2009] Investigators have indicated that Donchak identifies with white supremacist ideology, wearing “Border Patrol” T-shirts and listening to overtly racist music. During the trial, prosecutors played one song from Donchak’s collection, titled “The White Man Marches On,” whose lyrics glorify violence against minorities. Prosecution witness Colin Walsh told the jury: “He’d sing along with it. He really didn’t like Hispanics.” Walsh testified that he saw Piekarsky deliver the kick that resulted in Ramirez’s death. Walsh said that after the beating, Piekarsky boasted to him that “he kicked the guy so hard his shoes flew off.” Eyewitness Victor Garcia testified that instead of going after Piekarsky, Donchak, and the other teenagers, who fled the scene after beating and kicking Ramirez, the police harassed him and other Hispanic witnesses. The mother of another teenager who attacked Ramirez, Brian Scully (see May 18, 2009), testified that Moyer called her in the days after the beating and told her if her son had gray-blue sneakers, to “get rid of them.” Testimony also showed that Moyer worked with Piekarsky, Walsh, and others involved in the beating to revamp the story of the beating to eliminate all references to racist comments, and to paint Ramirez as the instigator of the fight. [Scranton Times Tribune, 10/9/2009]

East German guards carry the body of a slain child back over the border, in this undated photo. [Source: Ben and Bawb's Blog (.com)]Alaska candidate for US Senate Joe Miller (R-AK) tells a crowd at a town hall meeting in an Anchorage middle school that the US should emulate the effectiveness of the former East German border control system to keep illegal immigrants out. A Miller supporter asks Miller how he thinks the US should stop illegal immigrants. Miller responds that the way to stop illegal immigration is to build a fence at the border (he does not say the northern or southern border), and cites the effectiveness of the East Germans in controlling their borders. East Germany, under Soviet control, built the infamous Berlin Wall, and hundreds of people were killed by East German border patrol officials trying to sneak out of East Germany into West Germany. Miller says he got a first-hand look at the barbed wire and concrete divide as a West Point cadet when he was sent to the Fulda Gap near Frankfurt, “when the wall was still up between East and West Germany.” Miller says, “East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow.” Perhaps referring to the machine gun nests on and around the wall, and the border guards with standing orders to shoot to kill, Miller adds: “Obviously there were other things that were involved, but we have the capacity as a great nation to obviously secure our border. If East Germany could do it, we could do it.” [Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010] After the town hall event, a group of Miller’s private security guards forcibly detain and handcuff a reporter who attempts to question Miller (see October 17, 2010).

Several of Joe Miller’s private security guards stand over a handcuffed Tony Hopfinger, whom they detained during a political event. [Source: Anchorage Daily News]Tony Hopfinger, an editor of the Alaska Dispatch, is “arrested,” detained, and handcuffed by private security guards employed by US Senate candidate Joe Miller (R-AK) after he attempts to interview Miller. Miller appeared at a public event at Anchorage, Alaska’s Central Middle School, sponsored by his campaign. The guards handcuff Hopfinger, place him in a chair in a hallway, and stand over him, presumably to prevent his “escape” from custody. They release him when Anchorage police arrive on the scene and order him arrested. The security guards come from a private security firm known as The Drop Zone; owner William Fulton, one of the guards who detains Hopfinger, accuses Hopfinger of trespassing at the public event, and says he assaulted someone by shoving him. Anchorage police say they have not yet filed charges against anyone. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/17/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010; Salon, 10/18/2010] Miller, Fulton, and The Drop Zone are later shown to have ties to Alaska’s far-right paramilitary and militia groups, to employ active-duty soldiers, and to lack a business license to legally operate (see October 18, 2010). Small Gathering Marked by Candidate Dodging Tough Questions - The 3 p.m. event is billed by the Miller campaign as a chance for voters to “hear Joe Miller speak for himself,” and is clearly a public event: in a Facebook campaign entry, the campaign urges supporters to bring their “friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances, neighbors.” The entry also tells voters, “Don’t let the media skew your views.” Miller spends some 45 minutes addressing the crowd of several hundred voters and, according to the Anchorage Daily News, “answering—or deflecting—questions.” While there are many Miller supporters in the crowd, some hostile questioners also make themselves heard. One questioner, referring to Miller’s admitted reliance on medical care subsidies and other federal benefits in contradiction to his campaign theme of such benefits being unconstitutional, calls Miller a “welfare queen—you had a lot of children that you couldn’t afford, and we had to pay for it.” Miller responds that he is not necessarily opposed to such benefits, only that they should come from the states and not the federal government. Another criticizes Miller’s announcement last week that he would no longer answer questions about his character or his personal history. The questioner says that while his opponents have previous records in elective office, he does not: “In this instance, you have no record, so it’s meaningful and it’s reasonable that we would want to examine your professional background and your military…” Miller cuts her off and calls her a known supporter of his opponent, write-in candidate Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who lost a narrow primary vote to him. Miller says he has a public record as a state and federal judge, but adds that he wants to discuss his position on federal spending and not federal subsidies he may have received. During the questioning period, he says he will stay to talk to individuals, but when the period concludes, he quickly leaves the room. [Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010] Miller does speak to a few participants in the school hallway after leaving the room. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/18/2010]Detained after Asking Questions - Hopfinger, carrying a small video camera, approaches Miller after the event, and asks questions of the candidate concerning disciplinary actions taken against him while he was a lawyer for the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The topic is one Miller has cited as driving his refusal to answer further questions about his character and personal history; he was disciplined for using government computers for partisan political activity during his time as a part-time borough attorney. Three press outlets, including the Alaska Dispatch and the Anchorage Daily News, are suing the borough to get Miller’s personnel file. Miller walks away from Hopfinger without answering. Some of the people in the vicinity tell Hopfinger to “quit pestering” Miller. As they walk down the hallway, Miller suddenly changes direction, leaving Hopfinger quickly surrounded and pressed in by Miller supporters and a large contingent of private security guards, all of them wearing radio earphones. (Miller later claims that Hopfinger is actively blocking his exit from the hallway, a claim not backed up by evidence, and tells a Fox News reporter that Hopfinger “was hounding me… blocking the way.”) Hopfinger later says he feels threatened and pressured, so he shoves one of the guards aside. “These guys were bumping into me,” Hopfinger later says, “bumping me into Miller’s supporters.” He later identifies Fulton as the individual making most of the physical contact with him. The man Hopfinger shoves is not hurt, Fulton later says, though Hopfinger later says Fulton is the man he pushed away. No one else comes forward to say they were the person “assaulted,” Hopfinger later says. At this point, Miller’s private security guards seize Hopfinger, push him against a wall, cuff his hands behind his back with steel handcuffs, sit him in a chair in a hallway, and “confiscate” his video camera. Hopfinger later says he chooses not to resist, saying “these guys would have had me on the ground; it ramped up that fast.” He later says that when the guards tell him he is trespassing, he is given no time to leave, and is immediately seized and handcuffed. Everything happens in seconds, he will say. Hopfinger later says that when he receives his video camera back, the segment of video showing his questions to Miller, and the ensuing scuffle, have been deleted. Hopfinger refuses an offer from police to have the video camera taken into custody and analyzed by the crime lab. The guard who takes the camera later denies erasing anything, and says Hopfinger dropped it during the altercation. [Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010; Salon, 10/18/2010; Fox News, 10/18/2010; Alaska Dispatch, 10/19/2010] A Miller supporter who witnesses the incident later says Miller knocks her aside and “bowl[s] over” her eight-year-old son in his attempt to get away from Hopfinger (see October 17-18, 2010). Other Reporters Threatened - Hopfinger later says Fulton then says he is calling the police, and Hopfinger responds that calling the police is a good idea. Hopfinger is then handcuffed. Fulton later says he does not know how long Hopfinger was detained for; Hopfinger later says it seemed like a long time to him. While Hopfinger is in handcuffs and surrounded by Miller’s guards, the guards attempt to prevent other reporters from talking to him, and threaten the reporters with similar “arrests” and handcuffing for trespassing. An Anchorage Daily News reporter succeeds in speaking with Hopfinger, and is not detained. Several small altercations between the guards and reporters ensue, consisting of chest bumps and shoving matches as the guards attempt to prevent reporters from filming the scene. Video footage shot by Anchorage Daily News reporter Rich Mauer shows three guards blocking Mauer and Dispatch reporter Jill Burke from approaching Hopfinger, and shows Burke repeatedly asking a guard to take his hands off her. When police officers arrive, they order Fulton to release Hopfinger from the handcuffs. According to Hopfinger, during the entire time he is detained, he is in the “custody” of people who identified themselves only as “Miller volunteers,” though most of them are wearing the radio earphones. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/17/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010; Alaska Dispatch, 10/18/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010] An Anchorage police officer removes the cuffs and refuses to accept Fulton’s “private person’s arrest” (Alaska’s equivalent of a “citizen’s arrest”) after interviewing people at the scene. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/18/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010]Miller Campaign Accuses Hopfinger of Assault, 'Irrational' Behavior - After the incident, the Miller campaign quickly releases a statement accusing Hopfinger of assault and attempting to “create a publicity stunt” (see October 17-18, 2010). [Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010] Hopfinger later says he would have preferred a less confrontational method of questioning Miller. “I was not assaulting or touching Joe, I was asking him questions,” Hopfinger will say. “I would certainly prefer to sit down with Mr. Miller and ask him the questions, but he drew a line in the sand a week ago and said he wasn’t going to do that. That doesn’t mean we don’t go to functions or public appearances and try to ask our questions.” [Alaska Dispatch, 10/19/2010]Further Investigation - The school’s security camera may have captured footage of the incident, police say. Hopfinger is considering whether to file assault charges against Fulton, “The Drop Zone,” and/or the Miller campaign. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/17/2010] However, Heidi Embley, a spokeswoman for the Anchorage School District, later says security cameras were partially installed at the school but were not equipped with recording devices, so no video of the scene is available from that source. She later says that Miller’s group paid $400 to use the school for three hours, a standard fee for any non-school group. She also says that any such gatherings are technically private events because the group is renting the facility for its meeting. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/18/2010] The campaign rented the cafeteria, stage, and parking lot, the school district later notes, and the hallway outside the event venue was not covered in the rental agreement. [Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010] Sergeant Mark Rein of the Anchorage Police Department says Hopfinger is not in custody or under arrest. [Crooks and Liars, 10/18/2010] Al Patterson, chief Anchorage municipal prosecutor, later decides to file no charges against anyone involved. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/19/2010]False Claim of Security Requirement - Miller later tells national news reporters that he had been told by the school district to hire private security guards as part of his agreement to use the facility. He later tells a Fox News reporter, “I might also note that the middle school itself required us by a contract for a campaign, required us to have a security team.” And he tells a CNN reporter: “There was a—a private security team that was required. We had to hire them because the school required that as a term in their lease.” Embley will state that Miller’s claims are false, and there is no such requirement for private security guards in the rental agreement. The agreement does require some sort of security plan, Embley will say, no matter what the function. She will give the agreement to reporters, who learn that the plan basically involves monitors to watch over parking and ensure participants do not bring food or drink into the facility. Miller’s campaign will later claim, again falsely, that the security plan called for Miller’s “security team” to enforce a “no disruptive behavior” clause, and in its assessment, Hopfinger was being disruptive. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/18/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010]

The campaign of Joe Miller (R-AK), a candidate for US Senate in Alaska, releases a pair of statements following Miller’s security guards detaining and handcuffing a reporter for attempting to ask Miller questions after a public event in Anchorage (see October 17, 2010). The first statement is a single paragraph from William Fulton, the owner of “The Drop Zone,” a private security firm whose guards, employed by Miller’s campaign, handcuffed and restrained Alaska Dispatch reporter Tony Hopfinger. Fulton himself was one of the guards who handcuffed Hopfinger. In his statement, Fulton accuses Hopfinger of “assaulting” one of his guards, and claims that because the school district rented the space to the campaign, his guards had the right to declare anyone in trespass. He says Hopfinger was “stalking” Miller and posed a security threat. The statement from the Miller campaign, entitled “Liberal Blogger ‘Loses It’ at Town Hall Meeting,” accuses Hopfinger, the editor of the Alaska Dispatch newspaper, of being “an irrational blogger” attempting to “create a publicity stunt” by assaulting someone during the event. The statement says Miller’s guards were forced to take action to restrain the “irrational” Hopfinger. “It is also important to note that the security personnel did not know that the individual they detained was a blogger who reporting on the campaign [sic],” the statement continues. Miller campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto refuses to comment or make Miller, himself a witness, available for news interviews. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/17/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010]Miller's Statement - The statement reads in full: “The Miller campaign was required by the facility to provide security at the event. Even though Joe had spent nearly an hour freely answering questions from those in attendance, the blogger chased Miller to the exit after the event concluded in an attempt to create and then record a ‘confrontation’ with the candidate. While Miller attempted to calmly exit the facility, the blogger physically assaulted another individual and made threatening gestures and movements towards the candidate. At that point the security personnel had to take action and intervened and detained the irrational blogger, whose anger overcame him. It is also important to note that the security personnel did not know that the individual they detained was a blogger who reporting on the campaign. To them, the blogger appeared irrational, angry, and potentially violent.” [Joe Miller, 10/17/2010; Crooks and Liars, 10/18/2010]Security Guard Insists He Had Legal Authority to Handcuff Reporter - Interviewed by a reporter from the Alaska Dispatch, Fulton says he and his guards pushed Hopfinger into a wall and handcuffed him because he refused to leave a private event and was trespassing. The event, which was clearly public, was indeed private, Fulton says, and Hopfinger should have been aware of that because of the “Joe Miller for Senate” signs outside the venue, an Anchorage middle school. “They leased it for a private event,” Fulton says. “It wasn’t a public place.” That, he says, gave him the legal authority to tell Hopfinger to leave, then grab him and handcuff him when he didn’t do as told. Hopfinger says he was given no warning and no opportunity to leave. He says he had no idea who Fulton was. The security guard was in a black suit, not a uniform, Hopfinger says, and refused to identify himself. “He throws me up against the wall,” Hopfinger states. “He handcuffs me,” and even then, Hopfinger says, Fulton refused to identify himself. Hopfinger says he was attempting to get Miller to answer questions about disciplinary hearings he faced while a lawyer with the Fairbanks North Star Borough, questions Miller has repeatedly refused to address. Fulton states that he and his fellow guards restrained Hopfinger because the reporter was “getting really pushy with Joe. Joe was trying to get away from him.” Fulton goes on to state that he was suspicious of Hopfinger because the reporter “had something in his hand,” but admits he knew Hopfinger was not carrying a weapon. “It could have been a camera,” he says. “It could have been a recording device. It could have been an iPhone.” Hopfinger was carrying, and using, a video camera. According to Fulton, when his guards surrounded Hopfinger, the reporter “shoulder checked a guy into a locker.” Fulton says whomever Hopfinger pushed aside “wasn’t one of our guys. It could have been anyone. [But] I saw that shoulder check as being violent.” Hopfinger says he was trying to get some room from the crowd of guards and Miller supporters pressing in on him, and only remembers touching Fulton. He says he did not “shoulder check” anyone, and says he put his hand on Fulton’s chest to try to push him away. “I was being pushed into a lot of people,” Hopfinger says. “I used my hand. It all happened in seconds. He said it was a private event. He grabbed me and said, ‘You’re under arrest.’” Fulton says as a private security guard he has the authority to police “private events,” but refuses to answer questions about how this particular event, billed as a public gathering at a public school, could be private. The Alaska Dispatch writes: “The meeting was open to the public. There were no names taken at the door. Reporters were not asked to apply for credentials.” Fulton insists, “This is a simple trespassing issue,” but no one else “trespassing” in the hallway with Hopfinger was detained. Fulton admits that others in the hallway may have been reporters, and says: “I think we told them [all] to leave. It’s not a public [place] if it’s leased. It was a private event… because it’s a private event, and we’ve taken over the school.” [Alaska Dispatch, 10/17/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010]Witness: Guards Overreacted, Miller Shoved Her, Knocked Over Young Boy - A witness to the incident says while Hopfinger was rude, he did not threaten Miller and the guards overreacted. Lolly Symbol, a Miller supporter from Big Lake, drove to the rally with her two young sons to ask Miller about his stance on gun control. She says she received the opportunity just after the town hall event, when Miller spoke with a few people outside the main room. She says she was standing next to Miller when Hopfinger began questioning him. According to Symbol, Miller was already angry with another questioner, an elderly woman who asked him about his military background. “He ended up getting really huffy with her,” Symbol says. She began asking him her question, she recalls, when Hopfinger interrupted her with a camera and a question about the incident with Fairbanks North Star Borough. “I would say Tony was aggressive, and I would say he was rude because he interrupted me, but he didn’t do anything wrong and he wasn’t posing a threat to Miller,” Symbol says. Miller shoved her aside, Symbol says, and “bowled over” her eight-year-old son Vincent Mahoney in his attempt to get away from Hopfinger. “I don’t know if [Miller] didn’t see him or didn’t care, but he didn’t say ‘excuse me’ or ‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t even turn his head,” Symbol recalls. “He simply did not care at all.” Hopfinger continued to try to question Miller, but the security guards blocked his access. “They kept pushing him back,” she recalls. “He kept saying, ‘I have a right to be here, I have a right to be asking these questions.’ Tony would try to walk forward and they would push him back.” Symbol says she did not see Hopfinger push anyone, though the reporter has said he did push someone he thought was a security guard who had bumped him to keep him back. Heidi Embley, a spokeswoman for the Anchorage School District, says security cameras were partially installed at the school but were not equipped with recording devices, so no video of the scene is available. Symbol says she attempted to give her statement to police, but no one would take her information. Of Hopfinger, she says: “I do not believe that he did anything wrong. He was rude and he was aggressive but that’s just what the press does. Legally he did not do anything wrong that deserved to be put in cuffs.” Of Miller and the incident, she says: “The whole thing just made me sick. I was a big supporter of Joe Miller, I really was. But not anymore.” [Alaska Dispatch, 10/18/2010]

The poster featured in the front window of the Drop Zone. The caption reads: “Fascism. Socialism. New World Order. InfoWars.com.” [Source: Life in Spenard (.com)]Investigative reporters and bloggers learn that the private security firm hired by Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller (R-AK) is also active in right-wing militia and paramilitary activities. They also learn that some of the guards employed by the firm, the Drop Zone (DZ), are active-duty military soldiers, and that the firm is unlicensed and therefore operating outside the law. [Huffington Post, 10/18/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010; Salon, 10/19/2010]Senate Candidate Has History of Armed Intimidation, Association with Militias - Miller himself has a history of armed intimidation: according to blogger and reporter Shannyn Moore, in 2008 he attempted to stage a “coup d’etat” of the leadership of the Alaska Republican Party, appearing during a meeting with a group of armed security guards. (The attempt, as such, was unsuccessful, and Miller currently enjoys the support of the Alaska Republican Party.) During the 2010 Senate campaign, Miller’s supporters drew media attention by brandishing assault rifles during campaign rallies (see July 19, 2010). [Huffington Post, 10/18/2010]Security Guards on Active Duty with Army - On September 17, Miller’s security guards forcibly detained and handcuffed reporter Tony Hopfinger for attempting to question Miller about disciplinary measures taken against him while he was a lawyer for the Fairbanks North Star Borough (see October 17, 2010). The security guards work with DZ, and two of the guards who roughed up Hopfinger are on active duty with the US Army. The two guards, Specialist Tyler Ellingboe and Sergeant Alexander Valdez, are members of the 3rd Maneuver Enhancement Brigade at Fort Richardson. Army public affairs officer Major Bill Coppernoll says neither soldier has permission from their commanding officers to work for DZ, and the Army is still looking into whether previous company or brigade commanders authorized their employment. “They’ve got to be up front with the chain of command,” Coppernoll says. “The chain of command needs to agree they can do that without affecting the readiness and the whole slew of things that are part of being a soldier that they need to do first.” DZ owner William Fulton, who was one of the guards who restrained and handcuffed Hopfinger, says it is not his job to ensure that the soldiers complied with Army regulations. “They’re adults—they are responsible for themselves,” Fulton says. [Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010; Salon, 10/19/2010] Hopfinger identifies Ellingboe and Valdez as two of the guards who stood over him during the time he was handcuffed. Hopfinger says Ellingboe and Valdez refused to give him their names and would not identify their company or who they were working for. At one point they told him they were volunteers, he says. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/19/2010] A Defense Department directive from 2008, entitled “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces on Active Duty,” states in part, “A member of the armed forces on active duty shall not:… [p]erform clerical or other duties for a partisan political committee or candidate during a campaign.” [Department of Defense, 2/19/2008 ]Security Firm: Ties to Militias, Blackwater - Fulton is an active member of the Alaska Citizens Militia, where he is titled a “supply sergeant.” The organization is led by former Michigan Militia leader Norm Olson (see April 1994, March 25 - April 1, 1996, and Summer 1996 - June 1997), who recently attempted to run for lieutenant governor of Alaska under the auspices of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party (AIP—see September 6-7, 2008). [Yahoo! News, 10/20/2010; PalinGates, 10/20/2010] Many DZ employees have bragged about their connections to far-right elements in Alaska’s political and paramilitary scenes, and have said that the firm employs a number of former Blackwater security personnel. The firm displays a large poster of President Obama as “The Joker” in its front window and a link to InfoWars.com, a right-wing conspiracy Web site hosted by Alex Jones. The owner of the Drop Zone, William Fulton, has boasted to patrons about his partners’ participation in renditions and “black ops” overseas, and likes to show his .50-caliber sniper rifle to prospective customers. Fulton has frequently told patrons about his fondness for Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, saying to one, “Glenn talks to the crazies,” who are his best customers. Fulton also has suspected ties to the Alaskan Independence Party, which once claimed Todd Palin, former Governor Sarah Palin’s husband, as a member. [Huffington Post, 10/18/2010; Anchorage Daily News, 10/18/2010; Life in Spenard, 10/18/2010; Salon, 10/19/2010]Miller's Ties to Militias - Alaska Citizens Militia leader Ray Southwell, a longtime crony of Olson’s and a fellow leader of the Alaska Citizens Militia, recently wrote of meeting Miller at a militia leader’s home in Soldotna, Alaska. Southwell wrote in a militia forum that he recently encouraged Miller to run for state office: “We need leaders here to stand against the feds.” In that same forum, Olson posted his endorsement of Miller’s candidacy. [PalinGates, 10/20/2010]Expired License - Investigating bloggers also find that the Drop Zone’s license to do business as a security firm (under the name “Dropzone Security Services”) expired in December 2009. The firm updated its license on September 18, 2010, the day after its guards detained and handcuffed Hopfinger, but only renewed its license to trade, not its license to provide security. [The Immoral Minority, 10/19/2010; Yahoo! News, 10/20/2010; PalinGates, 10/20/2010] Fulton tells a reporter that he is not a security guard and that DZ is not a security guard agency, therefore he needs no license to operate as a security firm. Instead, he says, DZ is a “contract agency” and that he and his people are considered “security agents,” not guards. “We don’t do anything covered under the security [statutes],” he says. “We don’t do anything that the state has any authority to tell us what to do.” He denies having any employees, and says he hires specific people on a contract basis. DZ is primarily a military supply store, Fulton says, and only does security contracts “three or four times a month.” He admits to doing business with Miller in the past, but refuses to go into detail. He goes on to say that his guards at the Miller event were unarmed, and his “contractors” only carry weapons when they undertake “fugitive recovery” jobs: “All the guys we use are professionals, and they act professionally and dress professionally.” Hopfinger disagrees with Fulton’s contention that he is a security “agent” as opposed to a “guard,” saying: “He certainly acted like an aggressive security guard and he may have broken the law. It was an illegal detention and an illegal arrest.” Of Miller, Hopfinger says the candidate is exhibiting “poor judgment… to have Fulton and active-duty soldiers be his bodyguards.” No other Alaska political candidate he has interviewed, including Miller’s Republican opponent Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), has security guards with them, he says. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/19/2010]Investigation - The firm is being investigated by the Alaska Department of Public Safety, both for its handling of the Hopfinger incident and for its unlicensed status. [Alaska Dispatch, 10/19/2010]

Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind, writing for their organization Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR), examine the role of “nativism” in the ideology of “tea party” members in a multi-part IREHR report (see August 24, 2010). (The Free Dictionary defines “nativists” as having “a sociopolitical policy… favoring the interests of established inhabitants over those of immigrants,” and favoring “[t]he reestablishment or perpetuation of native cultural traits, especially in opposition to acculturation.”) According to Burghart and Zeskind, many members and leaders of various “tea party” organizations are convinced that President Obama is not a “native-born” American, has never produced a valid birth certificate (see June 13, 2008), and is not a valid American citizen. They write that the idea “that Barack Obama is not a real American, but a ‘lying African,’ is… found across the entirety of the tea party movement. Hundreds of posts echoing these sentiments are on the Tea Party Nation Web site.” Since the first tea party protests in April 2009, they write: “those who do not believe that President Obama is a native born American have been widely visible. They have claimed he was a Muslim instead of a Christian, that he was born in Kenya or Indonesia, rather than in Hawaii. And that Barack Obama was a non-American socialist who conspiratorially slipped into the White House.” Characterizations that the tea party movement is based almost solely on economic concerns are belied by the strong threads of social conservatism, including “nativism,” evident in tea party ideology (see August 16, 2011). Conservative activists such as Pamela Geller, the authors note, have fueled tea party nativism and anti-Muslim/anti-immigrant stances. Geller is, the authors claim, a classic “Islamophobe,” expressing what a 1997 study by the Runnymede Trust termed an “unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.” Geller has frequently spoken at tea party events, often declaiming about the “threat” Muslims pose to America. Geller’s three “organizational fronts,” as Burghart and Zeskind call them, are her blog, “Atlas Shrugs,” and her two groups, SIOA (Stop Islamization of America) and the Freedom Defense Initiative. All are listed as official “partner” organizations of the ResistNet Tea Party faction. Geller is also a “birther” (see October 24, 2008, August 4, 2009, April 27, 2011, and April 29, 2011) who believes Obama is a “third worlder and a coward” who is “appeas[ing] his Islamic overlords.” Many tea party organizations also support anti-immigration legislation; Burghart and Zeskind cite a July 29 decision by the National Leadership Council of Tea Party Patriots to support Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration bill, SB1070. The largest umbrella tea party organization, the 1776 Tea Parties, holds as two of its “non-negotiable beliefs” that “illegal aliens are illegal” and “English only is required.” The 1776 Tea Parties also support Arizona’s SB1070, and has as members of its board two members of the violently anti-immigrant Minuteman Project. The tea party groups’ support for “birtherism” and nativist ideology has caused “something of a rift” between the groups and FreedomWorks, the lobbying organization that has funded the groups since their inception (see April 8, 2009 and April 14, 2009). Tea party members have targeted FreedomWorks founder Dick Armey over his limited support for pro-immigrant reform; one Tenneessee tea party organizer recently wrote, “I think we should tar-and-feather Dick Armey.” Conservative blogger and activist Michelle Malkin, a vocal supporter of the tea party groups, has called Armey an “amnesty stooge.” Tea party organizer Roy Beck of anti-immigration organization NumbersUSA recently wrote that Armey “wants immigration to be treated as a social issue with no place in the tea parties,” and suggested FreedomWorks may be trying “to intimidate local tea parties” to stay away from the issue at the behest of “corporate benefactors [who] want the foreign labor to keep pouring in.” Congress members such as Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and others in Bachmann’s House Tea Party Caucus are strongly anti-immigrant. And 42 of the 51 Tea Party Caucus members also belong to the House Immigration Reform Caucus, which supports blocking any immigration reform that would give illegal residents a pathway to citizenship. Burghart and Zeskind write, “Opposition to ‘birthright citizenship’ extends throughout the tea party movement, and is often linked to an explicit fear of the demographic transformation underway in the United States, in which white people are projected to become one minority in a country of minorities during the next several decades.” ResistNet’s state director in Alabama, Jason Leverette, recently wrote of his fear that whites (“real Americans”) were being “out-bred” by “Mexicans” who want to take over the nation and “rule America! If this trend continues… by 2050 the United States will be ruled by Hosea Jesus Delgado Gonzalez Calderon, Esq. WTF!” Burghart and Zeskind conclude, “It is here, at the conjunction of nativism, opposition to birthright citizenship, the denigration of President Obama, and the fear of the new majority in American life, that the unstated racism embedded within the tea parties becomes vocal and unmistakable.” [The Free Dictionary, 2009; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010]

Larry Klayman, a former Justice Department official who founded the conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch, pens an editorial for the online news site WorldNetDaily (WND). Klayman makes the arguably racist assertion that President Obama leads only “his people” and not “white people.” Writing that “President Obama is not a ruler for all of the people, but rather ‘his people,’” Klayman begins by claiming that he was “proud that America could elect a black president and overcome centuries of racial prejudice,” even though Obama is, in his estimation, “a politician far to the left of mainstream America.” But, two years into the Obama administration, Klayman says the American citizenry has been repelled by watching Obama “seemingly favoring his own race and true religious allegiance over whites, Christians, and Jews.” Klayman asserts, without citing evidence, that “the trillion-dollar bailouts… were earmarked for black minority contractors. These bailouts were not only economically stupid, but the money was dolled [sic] out in a discriminatory way.” The Democrats’ health care reform initiative is, Klayman writes, “designed to provide health insurance mostly for the president’s black constituency.” He goes on to cite Obama’s defense of Harvard professor Henry Gates after Gates became involved in an altercation with a Boston police officer; Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to prosecute members of the New Black Panther movement who, Klayman claims, “illegally disrupted an election polling place in Philadelphia”; Obama’s supposed association with “black Muslim leaders” such as Louis Farrakhan; his relationship with his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright; and his cancellation of the White House’s commemoration of the National Day of Prayer in favor of, Klayman claims, a White House feast for the Muslim Holy Day of Ramadan, which Klayman says “proves” Obama’s status as a closet Muslim. Klayman then accuses Obama of being anti-Semitic because of his supposed failure to support Israel. Hence, Klayman writes, “the majority of white Christians and Jews no longer see Obama as the president of ‘We the People’ but instead ‘his’ people.… President Obama has not united the races and religions, but instead divided and pitted them against each other. The level of hostility one sees ‘in the streets,’ with a reverse backlash against blacks and Muslims, is frightening and potentially explosive.” Because of these characteristics, Klayman writes, “the nation stands even more—particularly during a severe continuing economic depression—on the precipice of chaos, rebellion, and ultimately revolution.” Any violence launched by white Christians and other Obama opponents, Klayman concludes, will be the fault of Obama. [WorldNetDaily, 10/22/2010] Terry Krepel, the progressive founder of the watchdog organization ConWebWatch, writes: “Klayman is projecting. He’s the one who’s injecting race into things by insisting that Obama rules only ‘his people.’” [Terry Krepel, 10/23/2010]

Former campaign coordinator Tim Profitt (left) stands next to Senate candidate Rand Paul (R-KY) in an undated photo. [Source: Think Progress]The Rand Paul (R-KY) Senate campaign takes out a full-page ad in the Lexington Herald-Leader. The ad features the names of several supporters, including Tim Profitt, the Paul campaign coordinator who stomped the head of a helpless woman at a debate the night before (see October 25, 2010 and After). [Barefoot and Progressive, 10/26/2010] The Paul campaign will also refuse to return a $1,950 campaign donation made by Profitt. [Lexington Courier-Journal, 10/27/2010] Later, the campaign begins distancing itself from Profitt, who will be charged with assault in the incident (see October 26-29, 2010).

Fox News host Sean Hannity accuses President Obama of implementing “failed socialist policies.” Referring to a comment by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who said he wanted Obama’s presidency to fail (see January 16, 2009), Hannity says: “You know what, I don’t want his [Obama’s] policies to succeed. I want him out of—I want him to be a one term president because he’s doing so much damage with his failed socialist policies.” [Media Matters, 11/17/2010]

The man who stomped a woman’s head against the curb of a parking lot in the moments before a Senatorial candidate debate in Kentucky (see October 25, 2010 and After) calls for an apology from the woman he assaulted. Tim Profitt, a former campaign coordinator for the Rand Paul (R-KY) Senate campaign, is facing potential criminal and civil charges on behalf of the woman he assaulted, Lauren Valle. The campaign of Paul’s opponent, Jack Conway (R-KY), has called for Profitt to apologize. But Profitt tells a local television reporter: “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I would like for her to apologize to me, to be honest with you.” Profitt adds, “She’s a professional at what she does, and I think when all the facts come out, I think people will see that she was the one that initiated the whole thing.” Officials for MoveOn.org, the liberal advocacy group with whom Valle is affiliated, are outraged by Profitt’s position. MoveOn official Ilyse Hogan says: “I am offended and outraged by the words of Tim Profitt. Profitt said the attack was ‘not a big deal,’ that Lauren ‘instigated it,’ and that ‘she should apologize’—words that are eerily familiar to many women who have faced assault and abuse.” A spokesman for the Conway campaign, John Collins, says Profitt’s attempts to minimize the assault are inexcusable. “I think anyone who has seen the video could see that it was one-sided and that it was not a crowd-control problem but rather a sort of a mob, thuggish mentality of some of the Rand Paul supporters,” he says. Collins notes that the Paul campaign has not yet released the names of the two men that threw Valle to the ground and held her down as Profitt stepped on her, and continues: “Anyone who watched the video saw two men wrestle a young woman to the ground and then a third man, Profitt, come and stomp on the back of her head. I think the simple question we have is when is it ever okay… for two men to wrestle a young woman down to the ground, even without the stomping.” [WKYT-TV, 10/26/2010; Lexington Courier-Journal, 10/27/2010] Valle later refuses an apology. In an open letter to Profitt, she writes: “I have been called a progressive, a liberal, a professional agitator. You have been called a conservative, a Republican, a member of the tea party movement. Fundamentally and most importantly, you and I are both human beings. We are also both American citizens. These two facts, to me, are far more meaningful than the multitude of labels that we carry. And if these two facts are true then it means we are on the same team. I have not been for one moment angry with you and your actions. Instead I feel thoroughly devastated. It is evident that your physical assault on me is symptomatic of the crisis that this country is struggling through. And it seems that I will heal from my injuries long before this country can work through our separation. Only when we decide let go of our hate, our violence, and our aggression will we be able to communicate to each other about the issues that divide us. Right now, we are not communicating, we are stomping on each other. No one can ever win, no one can ever be heard, with violence. You and I, as fellow citizens, and we, as a country, have a choice. Either we choose to continue the cycle of inflicting violence upon each other, screaming at each other, insulting each other, and putting one another down or we find a way to sit down and start listening to each other. We’ll see how far we get. We are all viciously and vociferously feeding a fire that will only burn us down together. We must reach inside ourselves and make space for each other. We must forgive each other. We must believe in our capacity for transformation. The moment we choose compassion and reconciliation is the moment that we will begin to move toward freedom. There is no other way. I believe that you should be held accountable for your actions but I also recognize the incredibly negative impact that the consequences must be having on your life, and I wish you all the best as you yourself heal from this. Violence hurts everyone.” [TPMDC, 10/29/2010] Profitt is charged with assault against Valle; he will plead not guilty, and his lawyer will claim that his assault was justified (see October 26-29, 2010).

Connecticut State Senate candidates Stuart Norman (left) and Andrew Maynard. [Source: Stonington-Mystic Patch]Connecticut State Senate candidates Stuart Norman, a Republican, and Andrew Maynard, a Democrat, pledge to run a campaign based on civility and courtesy towards one another. Before a debate, Norman and Maynard are seen texting to one another; Norman says, “We’re on speed dial now, Andy and I.” The two candidates decided at the beginning of the race to run a courteous campaign, and have joined to create what they call a “civility tour.” Norman says: “After one of the first events of the campaign, Andy and I got talking in the hallway, and I talked about how a campaign of civility and respect would be good. I said, ‘Andy, you might have better name recognition than me and if the press catches on, it could help me more than you.’ And [Maynard] said, ‘I still want to do it.’ I wouldn’t go as far as saying Andy and I have become good friends, but we respect each other.” The two candidates differ sharply on their ideas for reining in Connecticut’s deficit spending, but they express their views with what a local reporter calls “exceeding polite[ness], displaying conduct rarely associated with politics and government.” Maynard says, “Thoughtful leaders on both sides of the aisle, in both [legislative] houses, working with whoever our new governor may be, need to work together and find out what people expect from their government and what we can reliably deliver.” Whether Maynard or Norman wins, both say they will continue to work together. “I told Andy that if he’s elected I’ll be here the next two years, ready to help,” Norman tells the debate audience. “And I hope all of you will, too, because that really is what democracy is all about.” [The Day, 10/28/2010] Both consent to appear together on Comedy Central’s satirical The Daily Show just before the election. Maynard tells “interviewer” John Oliver: “I guess the message is: Don’t be a jack_ss. It’s kind of sad that this should be remarkable.” Maynard will win the election. [Hartford Courant, 12/9/2010]

US Representative Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) says some of her constituents are so worried about the upcoming reinstatement of federal estate taxes—so-called “death taxes” that impose taxes on estates worth over $3.5 million—that they are planning to discontinue dialysis and other life-extending medical treatments so they can die before December 31. Loomis declines to name anyone who is making such plans. Instead, she says many ranchers and farmers in the state would rather pass along their businesses—“their life’s work,” she says—to their children and grandchildren than see the federal government take a large chunk. “If you have spent your whole life building a ranch, and you wanted to pass your estate on to your children, and you were 88-years-old and on dialysis, and the only thing that was keeping you alive was that dialysis, you might make that same decision,” she tells reporters. Congressional Republicans are fighting to renew the tax cuts on wealthy estates which were implemented during the Bush administration. The cuts exempt large inheritances as well as certain wage income, interest, dividends, and capital gains. In 2009, the tax’s top rate was 45 percent, but estates worth less than $3.5 million, or $7 million in the case of married couples, were exempt. That left less than 1 percent of all estates subject to the tax. Loomis and many Republicans have falsely characterized the tax as negatively impacting family farms and small businesses. The tax cuts are slated to expire in 2011. The exemption will shrink to $1 million and the top rate will rise to 55 percent. Lummis says the children of some people choosing death over taxes told her of their parents’ decision. She refuses to identify them and says it will be their decision to come forward. [Associated Press, 10/29/2010]

Assistant state attorney Andrew Shirvell of Michigan is fired for harassing the student assembly president of the University of Michigan, Chris Armstrong. Armstrong is gay; since April, Shirvell has conducted a campaign of harassment at him over his homosexuality, veracity, and other personal attributes (see April 1 - October 1, 2010). Shirvell maintains he was merely exercising his freedom of speech. Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox fires Shirvell after the first day of a mandatory disciplinary hearing for him. Cox says that Shirvell’s firing comes after a state investigation revealed that Shirvell “repeatedly violated office policies, engaged in borderline stalking behavior, and inappropriately used state resources.” Shirvell also told a number of lies during the disciplinary hearing. Cox adds, “To be clear, I refuse to fire anyone for exercising their First Amendment rights, regardless of how popular or unpopular their positions might be.” Cox says Shirvell crossed the boundaries of free speech when he repeatedly went to Armstrong’s home to verbally abuse him, including one visit at 1:30 a.m. “That incident is especially telling because it clearly was about harassing Mr. Armstrong, not engaging in free speech,” Cox says. Armstrong says Shirvell videotaped a late-night party at his home, appeared on campus with signs calling him a “racist” and a “liar,” and repeatedly vilified him on Internet blogs. Armstrong says the state should revoke Shirvell’s law license. A statement from the attorney general’s office says, “The next step must be a complete retraction of all the malicious lies and fabrications by Mr. Shirvell, and a public apology to Mr. Armstrong, his family and others Mr. Shirvell has slandered.” Shirvell’s lawyer says his client is considering appealing the decision to fire him to the Michigan Civil Service Commission, and says Shirvell believes the decision to fire him was politically motivated. Cox says, “The cumulative effects of his use of state resources, harassing conduct that is not protected by the First Amendment, and his lies during the disciplinary conference all demonstrate adequate evidence of conduct unbecoming a state employee.” Shirvell is prohibited by a restraining order from making physical or verbal contact with Armstrong, nor is he allowed to be in the same place as the student when it’s likely Armstrong will be present. [Associated Press, 11/8/2010]

During a legislative hearing, Tennessee State Representative Curry Todd (R-TN) asks a health official if the state-funded Cover Kids health program, which helps pregnant women obtain prenatal and other child care, checks the immigration status of its patients before offering benefits. The official replies that under federal law the program officials cannot check the citizenship status of its patients seeking prenatal care because all children born in the US are automatically American citizens. Todd then warns that without status checks, immigrants will “go out there like rats and multiply.” No one else on the Fiscal Review Committee challenges his remarks. Todd later tells reporters that he was wrong to use that choice of words, and should have referred to “anchor babies” instead—the term used by some to accuse immigrants of having children in America for the sole purpose of using those children’s citizenship to stay in the country. Immigrant rights advocate Stephen Fotopulos says Todd’s remark is inexcusable. “This kind of dehumanizing rhetoric is all too common on some talk radio shows, where hate sells and there’s no accountability,” Fotopulos says. “But there’s absolutely no excuse for it to come out of the mouth of an elected official in Tennessee.” The progressive news Web site Think Progress calls the term “anchor babies” “unquestionably offensive.” [Associated Press, 11/11/2010; Think Progress, 11/11/2010]

Within hours of Fox News host Glenn Beck’s first broadcast during his three-day tirade against Jewish philanthropist and financier George Soros (see November 9-11, 2010 and After), Jewish organizations begin condemning his remarks. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) accuses Beck of anti-Semitism. ADL president Abraham Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, recalls living with a Catholic nanny during the Holocaust and says: “Look, I spit on Jews when I was six years old. Does that make me an anti-Semite?” The issue of the Holocaust, Foxman says, “is so sensitive that I’m not even sure Holocaust survivors themselves are willing to make such judgments. For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say, ‘There’s a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps,’ that’s horrific. It’s totally off limits and over the top.” Beck is speaking “either out of total ignorance or total insensitivity,” Foxman says, and adds in a statement: “While I, too, may disagree with many of Soros’s views and analysis on the issues, to bring in this kind of innuendo about his past is unacceptable. To hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as part of a larger effort to denigrate the man is repugnant. The Holocaust was a horrific time, and many people had to make excruciating choices to ensure their survival. George Soros has been forthright about his childhood experiences and his family’s history, and there the matter should rest.” Elan Steinberg of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants calls the Beck accusations “monstrous; you don’t make such accusations without proof, and I have seen no such proof.” Beck’s accusations, Steinberg says, “go to the heart of the instrumentalization and trivialization of the Holocaust.” Simon Greer, president of the Jewish Funds for Justice, says that Beck’s comments “made a mockery of their professed understanding. In an effort to demonize a political opponent, Beck and Fox News scurrilously attacked George Soros, a prominent Jewish philanthropist and Holocaust survivor. No one who truly understands ‘the sensitivity and sacred nature’ of the Holocaust would deliberately and grotesquely mis-characterize the experience of a 13-year-old Jew in Nazi-occupied Hungary whose father hid him with a non-Jewish family to keep him alive.” Interfaith Alliance head C. Welton Gaddy says Beck’s “use of the Holocaust to discredit George Soros is beyond repugnant. The Holocaust is one of history’s most tragic events and those who survived it are owed our enduring respect.” [The Jewish Week, 11/11/2010; Salon, 11/11/2010] The ADL’s Foxman has previously lauded Beck as a “strong… friend of Israel.” [KMIR, 11/13/2010] Jewish columnist J.J. Goldberg writes, “There’s a difference between first-degree murder and vehicular homicide, which is intentionality.” Goldberg isn’t convinced that Beck intended to attack Jews, but he calls Beck’s three-day attack on Soros “as close as I’ve heard on mainstream television to fascism.” [Daily Beast, 11/11/2010] Jewish columnist M.J. Rosenberg writes that Beck’s series on Soros is “so anti-Semitic” that it has convinced him a Holocaust could happen in the United States. “I am not saying Beck is anti-Semitic,” he says. “I think he is so utterly ignorant of Jewish history and the history of Germany 1933-1945 that he is unaware of what he is doing.” [Raw Story, 11/11/2010] Jonathan Tobin, the editor of the neoconservative Commentary magazine, has criticized Soros before. But Tobin now writes: “Beck is in no position to pontificate about the conduct of Holocaust survivors and should refrain from even commenting about this subject.… Such topics really must be off-limits, even in the take-no-prisoners world of contemporary punditry.… There is much to criticize about George Soros’s career, and his current political activities are troubling. But Beck’s denunciation of him is marred by ignorance and offensive innuendo. Instead of providing sharp insight into a shady character, all Beck has done is further muddy the waters and undermine his own credibility as a commentator.” [Christian Science Monitor, 11/13/2010]Fox Defends Beck - Fox News stands by Beck’s attack on Soros, with senior vice president Joel Cheatwood saying in a statement that the “information regarding Mr. Soros’s experiences growing up were taken directly from his writings and from interviews given by him to the media, and no negative opinion was offered as to his actions as a child.” [New York Times, 11/11/2010]Beck's References to Holocaust and Nazi Germany Source of Concern - Greer and two rabbis met with Fox News executives in July to discuss Beck’s “constant and often inappropriate invocation of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany on the air” (see July 26, 2010). [The Jewish Week, 11/11/2010] Greer accuses Beck and Fox News of “mak[ing] a mockery of their commitment to me and two rabbis” by airing the attack on Soros, and defends Soros as committed to the Jewish faith. Greer writes that he will again complain to Fox News executives about Beck’s behavior. [Jewish Journal, 11/11/2010]Beck Attempting to Tarnish Soros as a Democratic Contributor? - James Besser, writing for The Jewish Week, asks: “Why is Soros important to the far right? Could it be because he is a major contributor to Democratic causes, and because they are trying to make his money radioactive to their political adversaries?” [The Jewish Week, 11/11/2010]

Glenn Beck uses a chalkboard to connect billionaire George Soros to numerous events and organizations. [Source: Open Salon (.com)]Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck spends three broadcast days lambasting Jewish billionaire George Soros, whom Beck blames for single-handedly funding America’s left-wing, liberal, and progressive causes. Beck calls Soros a “puppet master” responsible for spreading political and economic chaos throughout the world. Soros was a teenager in Hungary when the Nazis invaded that country; Soros spent a brief period of time hiding with a non-Jewish Hungarian family whose father handed out deportation notices to Hungarian Jews. Soros has written of this incident in his biography; Beck uses that fact to label Soros as a Nazi collaborator. [Salon, 11/11/2010; Atlantic Wire, 11/12/2010; Cenk Uygur, 11/13/2010] Beck tells his audience that Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps. And I am certainly not saying that George Soros enjoyed that, even had a choice. I mean, he’s 14 years old. He was surviving. So I’m not making a judgment. That’s between him and God. As a 14-year-old boy, I don’t know what you would do. I don’t know what you would do. But you would think that there would be some remorse as an 80-year-old man or a 40-year-old man or a 20-year-old man, when it was all over, you would do some soul searching and say: ‘What did I do? What did I do?’” On his radio show, Beck goes farther, accusing Soros of helping “send the Jews” to “death camps” during the Holocaust. Beck goes on to add that Soros “is not a fan of the state of Israel. George Soros is—many people would call him an anti-Semite. I will not. I don’t know enough about all of his positions on Jews. I know his mother, in George Soros’s own words, his mother was an anti-Semite. And so he just has this weird, weird world view. He’s also an atheist.” [The Jewish Week, 11/11/2010; Media Matters, 11/11/2010] Beck goes on to accuse Soros of deliberately manipulating the global economy to ensure its collapse and says Soros wants to rule the world like a god: “Soros has admitted in the past he doesn’t believe in God, but that’s perhaps because he thinks he is.” [Daily Beast, 11/11/2010] “Eighty years ago, George Soros was born,” Beck says. “Little did the world know then, economies would collapse, currencies would become worthless, elections would be stolen, regimes would fall. And one billionaire would find himself coincidentally at the center of it all.” [Salon, 11/9/2010] Salon’s Alex Pareene writes: “I don’t think people who read secondhand accounts of the specials—or even those who read the transcripts—can grasp how weird and shameless the entire spectacle was. There were puppets strewn about the set. The camera always watches Beck watching whatever we’re supposed to be watching. Beck blatantly flirted with classic anti-Semitic tropes, knowing he’d be called on it but confident his friends would have his back. His taunting response to criticism: If he’s a lying anti-Semite, why would Rupert Murdoch [the owner of News Corp., which owns Fox News] allow him on the air?” [Salon, 11/13/2010]Beck: Soros Attempting to Destroy Global Economy - Jewish author and columnist Michelle Goldberg calls Beck’s “tirade” against Soros “a new low on American television.” She writes: “The program… was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles. Nothing like it has ever been on American television before.” Goldberg writes: “Beck went beyond demonizing him; he cast him as the protagonist in an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion [an infamous anti-Semitic screed]. He described Soros as the most powerful man on earth, the creator of a ‘shadow government’ that manipulates regimes and currencies for its own enrichment. [President] Obama is his ‘puppet,’ Beck says. Soros has even ‘infiltrated the churches.’ He foments social unrest and economic distress so he can bring down governments, all for his own financial gain. ‘Four times before,’ Beck warned. ‘We’ll be number five.’” Beck is misrepresenting Soros’s support for organizations that have helped to overthrow Communist regimes in former Soviet Union nations. Goldberg writes: “Beck’s implication is that there was something sinister in Soros’ support for anti-communist civil society organizations in the former Soviet Union. Further, he sees such support as evidence that Soros will engineer a Communist coup here in the United States. This kind of thinking only makes sense within the conspiratorial mind-set of classic anti-Semitism, in which Jews threaten all governments equally. And as a wealthy Jew with a distinct Eastern European accent, Soros is a perfect target for such theories.” [Daily Beast, 11/11/2010] Ron Chusid, writing for the blog Liberal Values, notes: “Glenn Beck often repeats conspiracy theories from the Birchers [meaning the John Birch Society—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011 ] and other far right wing groups. That made it inevitable that he would wander into repeating anti-Semitic memes which have historically been common on the far right.” [Ron Chusid, 11/11/2010] “How much worse can it get when one links the other to anti-Semitism and Nazism?” asks Brad Knickerbocker of the Christian Science Monitor. “And how much weirder can it get when the target of that charge escaped the Holocaust as a young Jewish teenager?” [Christian Science Monitor, 11/13/2010]Beck Denies Anti-Semitism - Beck denies any anti-Semitism on his part. Instead, Beck accuses Soros of being anti-Semitic, and uses his time of hiding with the Hungarian family as “proof” of his hatred of Jews, and his “collaboration” with Nazis. [Daily Beast, 11/11/2010] “I’m going to concentrate on the fact that I think the lesson he learned in that horrific year of 1944 is if you hide your true identity you can gain power, you can survive,” Beck says. “And those who are seen as disadvantaged or handicapped and don’t hide their identity, well, they don’t survive.” The accusations of Soros being a “collaborator” actually began in 1998, after Soros discussed his successful escape from Nazi persecution on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Although the accusations were quickly proven false, right-wing opponents of Soros have continued to air them in an attempt to discredit the billionaire (see August 8, 2006 and February 2007). [Media Matters, 11/11/2010]Jewish Organizations Condemn Beck - Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, and the Jewish Funds for Justice call Beck’s accusations “monstrous” and “horrific.” However, Fox News defends Beck’s comments (see November 9-11, 2010 and After).

Roger Ailes, a powerful Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988) and the founder and chairman of Fox News (see October 7, 1996), calls President Obama a “socialist,” and says the campaign contributions by Fox News’s parent company are legal and ethical. Of Obama, Ailes says: “The president has not been very successful. He just got kicked from Mumbai to South Korea, and he came home and attacked Republicans for it. He had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with.… He just has a different belief system than most Americans.” Fox News does not “single out” Obama for criticism, Ailes claims, but is merely “more direct” in its reporting. Ailes says Fox is correct in painting Obama as an anti-American who harbors secret sympathies for Islamist terrorists; it is the other news outlets that fear to report the “truth.” Most of the press is “in love” with Obama, he says. Ailes says Fox’s ratings boost since the Obama election (see November 4, 2008) has nothing to do with the network’s relentless criticism of Obama and the White House. Fox currently leads both of its cable news competitors, CNN and MSNBC, in ratings. He says that he was “totally surprised” when Fox News’s parent, News Corporation (often abbreviated NewsCorp), donated $2 million to Republican campaign organizations (see June 24, 2010 and After and September 30, 2010), but says NewsCorp owner Rupert Murdoch has the right to donate money to whichever organization or candidate he chooses. As for criticism of the donations, Ailes says he knew that “lefties would use it to immediately try to damage Fox News.” [Daily Beast, 11/16/2010] Fox News commentators and hosts have frequently tarred Obama and his advisors as socialists, “Stalinists,” and “Marxists” (see October 27, 2008, January 2009, March 17, 2009, March 29, 2009, April 1-2, 2009, May 13, 2009, May 28, 2009, September 1, 2009, January 27, 2010, May 19, 2010, September 18, 2010, September 29, 2010, and October 26, 2010).

Roger Ailes. [Source: All Access (.com)]Roger Ailes, the former Republican campaign guru who now heads Fox News, calls National Public Radio (NPR) officials “Nazis” for firing NPR and Fox News commentator Juan Williams; Williams recently made comments about Muslims that some, including NPR officials, took as racist. Of the NPR executives who fired Williams, Ailes says: “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.” (Air America is the now-defunct radio network that featured liberals and progressive talk show hosts and commentators.) Ailes also says that Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who has castigated Fox News host Glenn Beck for his routine invocation of Nazis in discussing the Obama administration (see October 3, 2010), should be “beheaded” for his writings. (He then claims he is merely joking.) Interviewer Howard Kurtz calls Ailes’s evocation of Nazis “disproportionate to the situation.” NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher says, “[W]e will let Mr. Ailes’s words speak for themselves.” [The Daily Beast, 11/17/2010] Ailes issues something of an apology, not to NPR or its executives, but to Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League. Ailes explains, “I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word, but I was angry at the time because of NPR’s willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough.” Ailes writes that he should have used the term “nasty, inflexible bigot” instead of “Nazi” to describe the NPR officials who fired Williams. Foxman says in a statement: “I welcome Roger Ailes’s apology, which is as sincere as it is heartfelt. Nazi comparisons of this nature are clearly inappropriate and offensive. While I wish Roger had never invoked that terminology, I appreciate his efforts to immediately reach out and to retract his words before they did any further harm.” [New York Times, 11/18/2010]

Siriun XM logo. [Source: Reuters]Talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who recently promised to leave the airwaves after repeatedly using the racial slur “n_igger” in conversation with an African-American woman (see August 10-18, 2010), announces that she will not leave the airwaves. Instead, Schlessinger is moving her syndicated radio show from the broadcast milieu to satellite radio. Schlessinger has signed a “multiyear deal” with Sirius XM Radio, according to a spokesperson. Schlessinger has repeatedly said she would be leaving the airwaves after her tirade, accusing her critics of “persecuting” her and denying her right to freedom of speech (see September 7, 2010 and September 8, 2010). Her broadcast program will end on Friday, December 31, 2010. Her Sirius XM show will begin the following Tuesday, January 3, 2011. Schlessinger explains why she chose to go with Sirius XM instead of leaving the airwaves: “The first and most important thing that appealed to me was the freedom to speak my mind without advertisers and affiliates being attacked by activist groups that just love to censor anything they don’t agree with,” she says. “That just about made my heart and head explode.” She cites pressure from the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters as driving her initial decision to leave radio (see August 13, 2010). She says she is sure her new show will offend some people. Michael Harrison of the trade publication Talkers says, “She will have far less listeners now, but she will be able to superserve her core [audience] with less compromise.” He says Schlessinger may do better on satellite radio since “since she appears to be more thin-skinned than most personalities in talk radio, although professionally she’d be better off with a combination of satellite and terrestrial radio.” Media Matters official Ari Rabin-Havt says her show will remain fundamentally the same. “Her influence and her ability to impact a wide audience has clearly decreased,” he says. [Associated Press, 11/26/2010; Media Matters, 11/27/2010]

Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee Joe Lieberman (I-CT) expresses doubts about designating WikiLeaks a foreign terrorist organization. Responding to a question on the Imus in the Morning radio show about a proposal from Representative Peter King (R-NY) to make such designation, Lieberman says: “Normally, we reserve that designation for groups that fit the traditional definition of terrorism, which is that they are using violence to achieve a political end.… While it’s true that what WikiLeaks did may result in damage to some people… it’s not al-Qaeda.” However, Lieberman does not rule out supporting the proposal, adding, “I want to talk to Pete and figure out what he’s got in mind.” In addition, he says that the group’s release of thousands of US documents over the past year is a “terrible thing,” and expresses the hope that “we are doing everything we can to take down their Web site.” [Hill, 11/29/2010]

Staff from the office of Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) contact the Internet retailer Amazon to ask about its hosting of WikiLeaks’ website. Lieberman is chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. [Guardian, 12/1/2010] His staff learns of the hosting from media accounts and leaves a series of questions, including, “Are there plans to take the site down,” with Amazon’s press secretary. [Talking Points Memo, 12/1/2010] The next day, Amazon will remove the website from its servers (see December 2, 2010).

The Internet retailer Amazon cancels WikiLeaks’ server account, removing its website from its servers. The move follows pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee (see December 1, 2010). As a result, the WikiLeaks website is inaccessible for a time, but it soon moves to servers in Sweden. The announcement that Amazon has got rid of WikiLeaks is also made by Lieberman, who adds that the “decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.” Amazon attributes the break between the two organizations to a terms of service violation by WikiLeaks. However, WikiLeaks expresses disappointment with Amazon, saying in a post on Twitter that if Amazon is “so uncomfortable with the First Amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.” [Guardian, 12/1/2010]

The US has been conducting airstrikes against suspected terrorists in Yemen, but denying responsibility for them, according to cables provided by the whistleblower organization Wikileaks to the British daily The Guardian. The bombings are being attributed to local forces rather than the US in an attempt not to rile Arab public opinion. The Guardian breaks the story based on a number of cables provided by Wikileaks, which contain damning quotes. In a September 2009 cable Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh told US President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, John Brennan, “I have given you an open door on terrorism, so I am not responsible.” Following a strike that killed multiple civilians carried out by the US, but attributed to Yemenis in December 2009, US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche cabled Washington to say: “Yemen insisted it must ‘maintain the status quo’ regarding the official denial of US involvement. Saleh wanted operations to continue ‘non-stop until we eradicate this disease.’” Just over a week later, Saleh told General David Petraeus, then head of US Central Command, “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.” This prompted the deputy prime minister, Rashad al-Alimi, who was also at the meeting, to joke that he had just “lied” by telling parliament the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa (the alleged al-Qaeda strongholds) were American-made but deployed by Yemen. In addition to the secret bombings, the Yemen-related cables published by The Guardian on this day deal with Yemeni reluctance to meet some US demands, the inaccuracy of some US weapons, large payments to be made by the US to Yemen, the Saudi Arabian reaction to the strikes, poor counterterrorism training for staff at Yemeni airports, Yemen’s unwillingness to share information about Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, alleged to be an al-Qaeda bomb-maker, and poor counterterrorist infrastructure in Yemen. [Guardian, 12/3/2010] Before the “war on terror,” the last time the US bombed a country in secret was during the Vietnam War, when the US bombed Cambodia (see March 15-17, 1969). It was a New York Times report on the bombing that was one of the spurs behind President Richard Nixon’s formation of the later-infamous “plumbers” unit (see May 9-10, 1969).

The Library of Congress blocks access to WikiLeaks’ website across its computer systems, including those operated by library users in reading rooms. The library puts out a statement saying that users should not access documents regarded as classified, even if the documents are placed in the public domain through leaking. “The library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information,” says the library. “Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.” [Matt Raymond, 12/3/2010]

Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros warns a gathering in New York that the combination of Fox News, Fox talk show host Glenn Beck, the US “tea parties,” and what he calls Americans’ propensity to fantasize unrealistically about their political system may lead “this open society to be on the verge of some dictatorial democracy.” Soros makes his remarks in conversation with CNN host Fareed Zakaria at an International Crisis Center dinner in honor of Soros. The billionaire, often vilified by Beck and others for being a supporter of progressive and liberal causes (see November 9-11, 2010 and After), names George Orwell’s novel 1984 as a possible precursor to the future face of American society; the novel satirized the Communist system of absolute control over society and politics. Soros is harsh in his criticisms of Fox News and its role in American political discourse, saying that it is a threat to American open society. He characterizes Beck as, in the words of Forbes writer Robert Lenzner, “a throwback to the wild and crazy radical elements that never before were given such a public pedestal to foment their hate.” [Forbes, 12/7/2010]

Bryan Fischer. [Source: Renew America (.com)]Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis for government and public policy at the American Family Association (AFA), says that the criticism of the WikiLeaks cables proves that gays shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the US military. Fischer claims that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is actively promoting what he calls the “homosexual” agenda, and says Private Bradley Manning, who is in custody after being linked to State Department cables leaked by Wikileaks, may have “sold out his country in what may turn out to be fit of gay pique.” Fischer accuses Manning of being “seriously confused about his sexuality,” and says he may have “launched the WikiLeaks campaign to strike back at the military for its ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, which he vehemently opposed.” Manning, Fischer writes, is “a one-man argument for keeping open homosexuals from serving in the military in the first place. If the 1993 law—which flatly prohibits homosexuals from a place in the armed services—had been followed, there would be no PFC Bradley Manning and no WikiLeaks.” Fischer shows no evidence that Manning’s actions were sparked by any antipathy towards the military’s ban on gays. Recently the Southern Poverty Law Center cited Fischer’s anti-gay writings when it labeled the AFA a “hate group.” In previous blog posts and on his radio talk show, Fischer has blamed Nazism on homosexuality, has proposed criminalizing homosexual activity, and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy. He opposes funding AIDS research because, he has written, “we know the cause, we know the cure: stop engaging in homosexual sex and stop shooting up with drugs.” He has also equated homosexuality with domestic terrorism. [Bryan Fischer, 12/7/2010; Raw Story, 12/10/2010]

The Guardian publishes a cable drafted by US Ambassador to Tunisia Robert F. Godec in July 2009 containing a description of a meal with Mohammad Sakher El Materi, the son-in-law of Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, and his wife Nesrine Ben Ali El Materi. The Guardian obtained the cable through its agreement with WikiLeaks. The cable is primarily a description of El Materi’s political views, which coincide with US positions in some respects. However, there are also descriptions of the couple’s lifestyle. The dinner is called “lavish,” and the ambassador comments that El Materi is “living, however, in the midst of great wealth and excess, illustrating one reason resentment of President Ben Ali’s in-laws is increasing.” Godec also gives a desciption of El Materi’s home, which is “spacious,” “includes an infinity pool,” and has “ancient artifacts everywhere.” In addition, El Materi “hopes to move into his new (and palatial) house in Sidi Bou Said in eight to 10 months.” Further, there is a description of the meal, which included “perhaps a dozen dishes, including fish, steak, turkey, octopus, fish couscous, and much more.” Most startlingly: “After dinner, he served ice cream and frozen yoghurt he brought in by plane from Saint Tropez, along with blueberries and raspberries and fresh fruit and chocolate cake. (NB. El Materi and Nesrine had just returned from Saint Tropez on their private jet after two weeks vacation…).” El Materi also has a large tiger on his compound, which reminded the ambassador “of Uday Hussein’s lion cage in Baghdad.” Godec’s final comment is: “The opulence with which El Materi and Nesrine live and their behavior make clear why they and other members of Ben Ali’s family are disliked and even hated by some Tunisians. The excesses of the Ben Ali family are growing.” [Guardian, 12/7/2010]

The Guardian publishes a cable drafted by US Ambassador to Tunisia Robert F. Godec in July 2009 containing a very candid assessment of the current Tunisian regime. The Guardian obtained the cable through its agreement with WikiLeaks. According to the cable, Tunisia should be a US ally, but is not, because of big problems in the form of “aging” President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, his “sclerotic regime,” the lack of a successor and political freedom, First Family corruption, high unemployment, regional inequalities, and the fact that Tunisia is a “police state.” Perhaps the most startling passage in the cable refers to Ben Ali’s wife: “Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, First Lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. In private, regime opponents mock her; even those close to the government express dismay at her reported behavior.” Some portions of the cable are redacted; the context indicates they contain the names of pro-democracy leaders in contact with the embassy. [Guardian, 12/7/2010]

The government of Tunisia prevents its citizens from accessing the website of the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, which has republished US embassy cables about the current Tunisian regime. The cables were first published earlier in the day by The Guardian (see December 7, 2010 and December 7, 2010), which obtained them from WikiLeaks. The content of the cables is controversial because they contain candid assessments of Tunisia’s situation and deep-seated public anger about the ruling elite grouped around President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and its opulent lifestyle. [Guardian, 12/1/2010]

An anonymous Kremlin official suggests that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Following US criticism of Assange after Wikileaks began to release US diplomatic cables, the official tells the state news agency RIA Novosti: “[N]on-governmental and governmental organizations should think of ways to help him. Perhaps he could be awarded a Nobel prize.” [Haaretz, 12/8/2010]

The Guardian publishes a US diplomatic cable about the situation in Zimbabwe. [Guardian, 12/8/2010; Atlantic Monthly, 12/28/2010] The newspaper obtained the cable, dated December 24, 2009, from the whistleblower organization Wikileaks. The text, drafted by the US embassy in Harare for the State Department in Washington, is based on a conversation with Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and relates attempts by forces opposed to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to ease him out of power. Tsvangirai complains about Mugabe dragging his feet over the implementation of agreements, admits that “his public statements calling for easing of sanctions” have come into conflict with “his private conversations saying they must be kept in place,” and observes that Mugabe “appears old and very tired.” The Guardian appears to think this last quote is the most interesting, as it is highlighted in yellow in the text of the cable and is also incorporated into the headline. [Guardian, 12/8/2010]

Wikileaks publishes a leaked US cable about the situation in Zimbabwe that will later become the subject of controversy. The cable is first published in the form of a bit torrent file and then on the organization’s website. Approximately one hour before Wikileaks publishes the cable, it had been published by The Guardian (see 9:30 p.m. December 8, 2010). [Atlantic Monthly, 12/28/2010]

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin, who has refused to obey orders deploying him to Afghanistan because, he says, he questions President Obama’s citizenship and therefore his right to issue orders to the military (see Before April 13, 2010), is convicted of disobeying orders from his lawful superior officers. In a court-martial, a military jury finds Lakin guilty of the specific charge of “missing movement by design.” His lawyers had argued that Lakin should be convicted only on lesser charges. He has already pled guilty to another charge that included not meeting with a superior when ordered to do so and not reporting for duty at Fort Campbell. During his trial, Lakin told the jury that he would “gladly deploy” if Obama’s original birth certificate were released and proved authentic (see June 13, 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, and July 28, 2009). He could be sentenced to up to 42 months in prison, but the jury sentences him to six months in prison and dishonorably discharges him from the Army. He also forfeits his pension. During the sentencing phase of his trial, a tearful Lakin tells the jury: “I don’t want [my career] to end this way. I want to continue to serve.… It crushed me not to be on deployment. I can be on a plane tomorrow. I’d truly do that.” Before his trial, Lakin issued a belligerent press statement saying he “invited” the court-martial and refused to deploy until Obama “proved” his citizenship (see April 22-23, 2010). During the trial, prosecutors played a March 30, 2010 YouTube video by Lakin that accused Obama of “subvert[ing] law and truth” and ordered Obama to “release your original, signed birth certificate—if you have one.” Lakin also released a second video in July accusing the Army of convicting him “without a trial” (see July 17, 2010). During sentencing, Lakin called the March video an embarrassing mistake, brought on by pressure and poor advice from supposed supporters (see April 22-23, 2010, August 2, 2010 and August 31, 2010). “I would not do this again,” he said. “It was a confusing time for me, and I was very emotional. I thought I was choosing the right path, and I did not.… I thought this was such an important question that I had to get an answer. I thought I was upholding the Army values by questioning this… but I was wrong.” During the proceedings, “birthers” in the gallery repeatedly interrupt with applause at references to Obama’s birth certificate, and can be heard calling the trial “disgusting.” They also hand out pamphlets with a picture of Obama labeled “usurper” and “ineligible.” [TPM Muckraker, 12/14/2010; Stars and Stripes, 12/15/2010; Associated Press, 12/16/2010]

A portion of the White House vegetable garden. [Source: Susty (.com)]Michael Reagan, a right-wing author and talk-show host, writes a column for the conservative news Web site NewsMax advising women to rebel against the agenda of “radical feminism” and get back to the traditional roles he believes they should adopt, beginning with a return to the kitchen. Reagan says that the US is “a nation whose distaff leadership is allowing radical feminists to redefine the role of motherhood,” and blames “a raging cadre of radical feminists” who “ostracize” mothers “should they dare to consider cooking for their families to be a major part of their traditional role as wives and mothers.” These “radical feminists” want women working at fast-food restaurants, Reagan claims, and not cooking for their families. Reagan then attacks First Lady Michelle Obama, who has become known for turning part of the White House lawn into a vegetable garden, as the Obama administration’s “food czar who instructs us on what chow is good for us and our children, who should cook it, and what foods should be kept off the national menu.” Reagan then writes, “Mothers are looked at with withering stares should they teach their daughters how to cook, and fathers get the same treatment if they concern themselves with their daughters’ future role as wives and mothers.” Reagan advises mothers to begin teaching their daughters to be the “family chef,” and fathers to “honor… and cherish” the family’s women “for making the kitchen one of their principal domains.” If this would happen, Reagan observes, “we’d be a lot better off.” However, something else is happening, with Michelle Obama “instruct[ing] us on what victuals we should eat,… warn[ing] us that the menu at the local fast-food emporium is the diet from hell,” and “dig[ging] up patches of the White House lawn [to plant] the seeds of what she tells us are the staples of a healthy diet—a diet regimen in the White House kitchens one doubts includes whatever puny edibles grown on the lawn of the Executive Mansion.” Reagan writes, “If she and her fellow radical feminists would devote more time to praising and defending the produce that farmers and retailers bring us, and less time playing the role as diet dictators, meals would be family celebrations instead of burdensome chores for the moms who cook them.” After lauding “tasty” fast-food meals as a “gift” a family can occasionally bequeath on a mother who spends most of her time cooking for her family, Reagan concludes: “A happy home is one in which moms teach their daughters how to cook tasty meals for their future families and dads teach their sons that one of their roles in family life is drying the dishes and otherwise doing chores around the house to lighten mom’s burdens. [W]omen should understand and act on the time-honored truth that the fastest route to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and not always through the drive-in window at the nearest fast-food restaurant. That’s one way we can begin to put the family—and America—back together.” [NewsMax, 12/17/2010] As of October 2010, the “puny” White House garden has produced, according to an analysis by The Week, “thousands of pounds of produce that has gone to feed the Obama family, White House guests, and the needy at a local food shelter. The first lady has also used the project [to] educate children about the benefits of fresh food.” The garden is 1,500 square feet in size, grows 55 different kinds of vegetables and other foodstuffs, uses no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, produced over 1,000 pounds of food in 2009 and over 1,600 pounds of food in 2010, and was inspired by former President Thomas Jefferson’s garden at Monticello, Virginia. The White House garden also contains a beehive, which as of October 2010 had produced some 134 pounds of honey. [The Week, 10/22/2010]

US Vice President Joseph Biden calls Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a “high-tech terrorist” on NBC’s Meet the Press. The interview was taped two days previously, but is broadcast on this day. Asked if he sees Assange as closer to a hi-tech terrorist than the whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers (see March 1971) in the 1970s, Biden replies: “I would argue it is closer to being a hi-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers. But, look, this guy has done things that have damaged and put in jeopardy the lives and occupations of people in other parts of the world.” Biden adds: “He’s made it more difficult for us to conduct our business with our allies and our friends. For example, in my meetings—you know I meet with most of these world leaders—there is a desire now to meet with me alone, rather than have staff in the room. It makes things more cumbersome—so it has done damage.” Asked if the administration could prevent further leaks, Biden comments, “The Justice Department is taking a look at that.” Biden goes on to suggest that if Assange facilitated the leak of the documents by colluding with the whilstleblower who provided them, thought to be former intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, he could be open to prosecution. “If he conspired to get these classified documents with a member of the US military that is fundamentally different than if someone drops on your lap… you are a press person, here is classified material.” Biden’s comments show an increased level of annoyance in the administration with Wikileaks. For example, the day before this interview was taped, Biden had expressed different sentiments. “I don’t think there’s any substantive damage,” he had commented then. [Guardian, 12/19/2010]

Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis for government and public policy at the American Family Association (AFA), accuses the Obama administration of planning to give the entire North American landmass to Native American tribes. Fischer is reacting to a recent announcement by President Obama that the US will sign a non-binding United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, which has been endorsed by 145 countries. The declaration states that “indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories, and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied, or otherwise used or acquired,” and nations “shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories, and resources.” Fischer writes that Obama “wants Indian tribes to be our new overlords.” He continues, “Perhaps he figures that, as an adopted Crow Indian, he will be the new chief over this revived Indian empire.” [Raw Story, 12/22/2010]

Hawaiian Governor Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) says he is “incensed” over the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory that asserts President Obama was born in a foreign land and not, as documents have proven, in Honolulu (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, July 1, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, and July 29, 2009). Abercrombie knew Obama’s parents when they attended university in Hawaii, and remembers seeing Obama as a baby when his parents took him to social events. He says he wants to change state policy to allow him to release additional proof that the president was born in Honolulu in 1961. “It’s an insult to his mother and to his father, and I knew his mother and father; they were my friends, and I have an emotional interest in that,” Abercrombie says. “It’s an emotional insult. It is disrespectful to the president; it is disrespectful to the office.” Abercrombie says he has talked to Hawaii’s attorney general and the chief of the Department of Health about how he can release more explicit documentation of Obama’s birth. “He’s a big boy; he can take sticks and stones. But there’s no reason on earth to have the memory of his parents insulted by people whose motivation is solely political. Let’s put this particular canard to rest.” He acknowledges that no matter what he does, some will remain unconvinced. Some of those critics, Abercrombie says, are engaging in a “demonological fantasy” about Obama’s birth. Referring to efforts in several state legislatures to force presidential candidates to produce authentic birth certificates (see February 14-27, 2011), he says, “[I]t is very difficult for me not to conclude that bills like that are meant as a coded message that he is not really American.” [New York Times, 12/24/2010] Abercrombie will abandon his attempt to procure the “explicit” documentation, presumably the “long form” certificate kept on file in Hawaii’s state records (see July 1, 2009), because Hawaii’s attorney general will inform him that the law precludes his disclosing any such information without the person in question’s explicit consent. “There is nothing more that Governor Abercrombie can do within the law to produce a document,” Abercrombie spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz will say. [St. Petersburg Times, 2/27/2011]

Controversial Mecklenburg County (North Carolina) Commissioner Bill James calls homosexuals “sexual predators,” drawing a wave of criticism. James engages in an email exchange with fellow commissioners about the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy, which basically allows gays to serve in the military if they stay quiet about their sexual orientation. “Homosexuals are sexual predators,” James writes. “Allowing homosexuals to serve in the US military with the endorsement of the Mecklenburg County Commission ignores a host of serious problems related to maintaining US military readiness and effectiveness, not the least of which is the current Democrat plan to allow homosexuals (male and female) to share showers with those they are attracted to.” James, a Republican, has a long history of vilifying homosexuals (see April 29, 2005), including a recent attack on fellow commissioner, Vilma Leake, over the loss of her son to AIDS (see December 17, 2009). James blames fellow commissioner Jennifer Roberts, the chair of the County Commission, for “making” him launch his latest attack on homosexuals. “People are entitled to their opinion, and that includes me,” James says. “I don’t expect people to [always] agree with me. It’s a political discussion and I wouldn’t have raised it on my own, but Jennifer decided to wade in on it.” Change.org, a national organization for progressive social change, is collecting signatures on a petition asking the Mecklenburg County Commission to censure James. Roberts says she has not spoken to other commissioners about James. “The challenge is everyone recognizes that it’s inappropriate language,” she says. “This is a repeat performance and I just don’t know if it helps or hurts the end goal by making any kind of formal statement.” In response to the controversy, James sends out a mass email further vilifying homosexuals (see December 30, 2010). James has attacked other groups as well as homosexuals: in 2004, he accused urban blacks of living in what he called a “moral sewer,” and in 2008 compared illegal immigrants to drug dealers and prostitutes. [Charlotte Observer, 12/31/2010; Andy Towle, 12/31/2010]

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James responds to criticism of his recent characterization of homosexuals as “sexual predators” (see Late December 2010) by sending out a mass email further vilifying homosexuals. He then posts the email on his Web site. In a letter titled “Red Phone,” James says that YMCAs across America have had to implement procedures to “prevent homosexuals from preying on men,” and says that since the Obama administration has repealed the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, Congress must develop rules “to protect young heterosexual military members from predatory behavior” by gays. James writes: “[L]ike a whore in church, homosexuals have been on their best behavior because that behavior was illegal and they didn’t want to risk being kicked out.… I can hear liberals screaming into their monitors, ‘They aren’t predators!’ I disagree. Go down to the Dowd YMCA and let them show you the ‘red phone.’ They had to put it in to stop homosexuals from ogling straight business men in the showers and changing rooms.” James is referring to a YMCA in Charlotte, North Carolina; there is no evidence that the Dowd YMCA or any other YMCA facilty has anything similar to James’s “red phone.” He also claims, without presenting evidence, that Mecklenberg County spent “big bucks” redesigning a local park so that it would not attract homosexuals. “Repealing DADT was a left-wing political move made before Christmas by a lame-duck Democrat Congress,” he writes. “That vote comes with some severe consequences for military readiness. The left-wing of America and radical homosexuals will be out in force to try and prevent any rules that would protect [heterosexual soldiers]. Young kids who enlist will become sexual targets in the new US military.” He concludes by citing an unattributed letter he claims to have received that states in part, “I am afraid that from now on, in the military, I will be punished for speaking up now that immoral conduct is condoned.” [Bill James, 12/30/2010 ; LBGTQ Nation, 12/31/2010] James has a long history of attacking and vilifying homosexuals (see April 29, 2005 and December 17, 2009).

Rick Santorum (R-PA), currently a longshot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, says that President Obama should oppose abortion because he is black. Santorum, who opposes abortion rights, says: “Barack Obama says no, well if that human life is not a person then.… I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.’” Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski later writes of Santorum: “He’s expressing a relatively common view in anti-abortion circles: That the higher rate of abortions among African-Americans means that black Americans should be particularly hostile to the practice. It’s not an argument that’s had much traction, however, with black voters, and Santorum may not be the ideal messenger for it.” [Buzzfeed, 1/1/2012; Huffington Post, 1/1/2012] NewsOne later comments: “What Santorum implies, as have anti-abortion billboards posted in inner cities (see February 2010), is that African-Americans such as Obama should oppose abortion because they were once considered three-fifths of a person by law and not completely human. And in saying this, Santorum succeeds in belittling women’s reproductive rights and the civil rights movement.” [NewsOne, 1/2/2012]

The domain name JulianAssangeMustDie.com, referencing Wikileaks leader Julian Assange, is registered, apparently by right-wing US blogger Melissa Clouthier. A few days after the domain name becomes news, it is deleted. [The Nation, 1/10/2011]

Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum (R-PA) blasts the Obama administration in what reporters term an attempt to establish himself as the Republican Party’s most conservative candidate. Speaking at the annual Strafford County Lincoln-Reagan dinner, Santorum claims that Democrats such as Barack Obama have “addicted” the nation’s poor on government “entitlements” instead of allowing them to work for a living, saying: “Close your eyes, like you’re listening to a drug dealer outside a school yard. They see entitlements as a way to make you dependent, weaker, less of a person than you are, drugging you into submission to a government who promises a high to take care of you.” Santorum also lashes out at the nation’s public schools, saying: “Just call them what they are. Public schools? That’s a nice way of putting it. These are government-run schools.” Santorum objects to Democratic attempts to increase funding for the nation’s Head Start program, calling it ineffective and a tool of Democrats to establish control over young people. He says: “They fund it more. Why? Because it brings more children into their domain. It brings more children out of the household.… Their agenda is to socialize your children with the thinking they want in those children’s minds.” Santorum home-schools his seven children; however, between 2001 and 2004, he enrolled them in Pennsylvania’s Cyber Charter School, a publicly-funded school, while he and his family lived in Virginia, and failed to pay over $100,000 in tuition fees and charges that the state and the local district were forced to absorb. Santorum now says he supports a government-funded voucher program that would allow parents to send their children to a school of their choice, or to have the government pay them to teach their children at home. “I would support anything that gets the money in who should be in control—or who should be the object—of the education system in this country,” he tells the assemblage. “And that is not the children but the parents. Because parents have the obligation to raise and educate their children.” [Politico, 3/11/2011; Mother Jones, 1/4/2012; CBS News, 2/15/2012]

Paul LePage. [Source: Portland Press-Herald]Maine Governor Paul LePage (R-ME) says that the NAACP can “kiss my butt” after explaining why he is refusing to attend any events honoring the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on King’s national holiday. LePage tells a local reporter that he considers the NAACP a “special interest” group, and adds: “End of story. And I’m not going to be held hostage by special interests. And if they want, they can look at my family picture. My son happens to be black, so they can do whatever they’d like about it.” Asked if his absence is an indication of a pattern rather than an isolated incident, LePage responds: “Tell ‘em to kiss my butt. If they want to play the race card, come to dinner and my son will talk to them.” LePage, a tea party-backed candidate who was sworn into office last week, has an adopted son of Jamaican heritage. Maine NAACP director Rachel Talbot Ross responds: “I don’t care who he’s got in his family. And he’s saying we’re playing the race card? The makeup of his family isn’t the issue and it never was the issue. For him to say we’re playing the race card shows a real lack of awareness of the very important issues we’re working to address. Our kids deserve better. Maine deserves better. His son deserves better.” Ross goes on to call LePage’s comments “ignorant,” and adds, “We don’t want to misinterpret his intention, but the message we’re getting is that we’re not welcome and we’re not part of the Maine he’s preparing to lead for the next four years.” Ralph Carmona, spokesman for the League of United Latin American Citizens, says LePage’s comments today put him in mind of his fall campaign promise to tell President Obama to “go to hell.” Carmona says: “The governor’s comments are creating, have the potential to create, a real racial dilemma for all Mainers. It is astonishing and troubling he would use this kind of rhetoric.” LePage later adds that he has prior personal and professional commitments that prevent him from attending events in honor of King. NAACP leaders say LePage has previously turned down a number of invitations from the group in recent months. LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt later sends out a statement denying the issue has anything to do with race, and notes that while mayor of Waterville, LePage attended several Martin Luther King Day breakfasts. Demerrit says: “This is not about race. Paul has a black son. This is about a special interest group taking issue with the governor for not making time for them and the governor dismissing their complaints in the direct manner people have come to expect from Paul LePage.” Demerrit calls LePage “very free spoken.” [Portland Press-Herald, 1/14/2011; Think Progress, 1/14/2011; Kennebec Journal, 1/14/2011] Maine’s Congressional delegation, whose members are all either attending the MLK Day events in person or sending representatives, declines to comment on LePage’s remarks. NAACP president Benjamin Jealous calls LePage’s comments “inflammatory,” and issues a statement reading in part: “Gov. LePage’s decision to inflame racial tension on the eve of the King holiday denigrates his office. His words are a reminder of the worst aspects of Maine’s history and out of touch with our nation’s deep yearning for increased civility and racial healing.” [Waterville Morning Sentinel, 1/15/2011] Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, an African-American, says of LePage’s comments: “Wow. Uncivil. Uncouth. Appalling. Reducing the NAACP and its venerable history of fighting for civil rights to ‘special interests’ is pure ideological laziness in the extreme.” He continues: “Just because LePage has a black son (by adoption) doesn’t mean no one can or should question his racial sensitivities.… Despite LePage’s offensive posterior invitation, I urge the Portland, Maine, branch of the NAACP to keep inviting the rude governor to events. Blacks are only 1.2 percent of the state’s population. But sooner or later, LePage will have to learn that he can’t talk to citizens of his state like that.” [Washington Post, 1/14/2011] In previous years, Maine’s governor has alternated between breakfasts honoring King in Portland and Bangor. This year’s breakfast is being held in Portland. LePage has been issuing rejections to attend the King breakfast since December 2010. He intends to release a pre-recorded radio address honoring King’s legacy. Bob Talbot, a 70-year-old executive board member of the Greater Bangor Area NAACP, says he cannot remember when a Maine governor did not attend one of the breakfasts, with the sole exception of former Governor John Baldacci (D-ME), who attended President Obama’s inauguration in 2009 instead of attending one of the breakfasts. “Governor LePage keeps saying he represents all Mainers,” Talbot says. “Well, I’m an eighth-generation Mainer. I think he needs to reconsider what it means to be a Mainer. He needs to understand that we’re all Mainers, not just a certain few or a certain political party.” [Kennebec Journal, 1/14/2011]

Talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who recently promised to leave the airwaves after repeatedly using the racial slur “n_igger” in conversation with an African-American woman (see August 10-18, 2010) before reversing course and signing a contract to appear on satellite radio (see November 26, 2010), denies doing anything objectionable in an NBC interview. Schlessinger appears as a guest on NBC’s Today show and is interviewed by Matt Lauer. Schlessinger says she was “astounded” by the criticism following her racially inflammatory tirade because “I didn’t call her a name and I brought up an important point,” referring to her repeated claims that using the term “n_gger” seems to be acceptable when used by black comedians. She says that “many parts of the black community” are responsible for “keeping that word alive,” not white conservatives such as herself. Schlessinger also falsely claims that the woman in the conversation “went to the NAACP and said I called her that name” on the air. She concludes that her “point was well made” but “inartfully” done. [Media Matters, 1/18/2011]

WorldNetDaily, a conservative news blog, reports that Governor Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) says the Hawaii Department of Health may not be able to locate the “long form” birth certificate for President Obama that it is required to keep on file. Previously, Health Department chief Chiyome Fukino said that she has personally seen the “long form” certificate and can vouch for its authenticity (see October 30, 2008 and July 28, 2009). According to an article written by Jerome Corsi, Abercrombie tells a Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter that he intends to find “definitive valid records” that prove Obama was born in Hawaii in order to head off a possible controversy during Obama’s 2012 re-election bid (see December 24, 2010). Corsi has written numerous attacks on Obama in the past, and most have been found to have been riddled with errors and falsehoods (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, and October 9, 2008). Corsi also reports that Abercrombie intends to find and make public what Corsi calls “a recording of the Obama birth in the state archives,” presumably the long form. “It was actually written, I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down,” Abercrombie says. Corsi says that the “short form” birth certificate provided by Obama during the 2008 election campaign (see June 13, 2008) is fraudulent, and that though “two purportedly independent Web sites that have displayed a strong partisan bias for Obama—Snopes.com… FactCheck.org” have published photographs of the document (see August 21, 2008), WND reports have stated that “the Hawaii Department of Health has refused to authenticate the COLB [certificate of live birth] posted on the Internet.” Corsi goes on to say that Obama’s parents could have lied about his birth to Hawaiian authorities, and that newspaper announcements of his birth published in 1961 (see July 2008) “do not prove he was born in Hawaii, since they could have been triggered by the grandparents registering the birth as Hawaiian, even if the baby was born elsewhere.” Corsi also says that the address in the press announcements was that of Obama’s maternal grandparents, not his father’s, who maintained a separate apartment in Honolulu “after he was supposedly married to Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother.” He also claims that “Dunham left Hawaii within three weeks of the baby’s birth to attend the University of Washington in Seattle,” apparently in an effort to insinuate that she is not Obama’s actual mother. Corsi quotes Tim Adams, whom he identifies as “a former senior elections clerk for the city and county of Honolulu in 2008,” as saying that “no long form, hospital-generated birth certificate” for Obama exists in the Hawaiian Department of Health, “and that neither Honolulu hospital—Queens Medical Center or Kapiolani Medical Center—has any record that Obama was born there.” [WorldNetDaily, 1/18/2011] The non-partisan fact-checking organization PolitiFact will investigate Corsi’s claims, and find them fraudulent (see February 14-27, 2011). Four months later, Obama will release the “long form” certificate (see April 27, 2011).

Former Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, police chief Matthew Nestor is convicted of filing false police reports, and his former colleague William Moyer is convicted of lying to the FBI, in a case centered on the 2008 beating death of immigrant Luis Ramirez (see July 12, 2008 and After). FBI investigators determined that the beating death of Ramirez was a hate crime. Nestor, Moyer, and former police officer Jason Hayes were charged with an array of federal crimes regarding their role in covering up the specifics of the Ramirez murder by a group of local white teenagers (see December 15, 2009). Nestor is found not guilty of conspiracy, and Moyer is found not guilty of filing a false report, tampering with evidence, and tampering with a witness. Hayes is acquitted of obstruction of justice. Nestor faces up to 20 years in prison for his conviction, while Moyer faces up to 25 years. Nestor’s lawyers say they will appeal their client’s conviction, but Moyer’s lawyers say they may not. Hayes says he wants to become a police officer again. Nestor and another Shenandoah police officer, former Captain Jamie Gennarini, face unrelated charges of taking part in an extortion racket. Both Nestor and Gennarini face civil charges in the death of Hispanic resident David Vega, who died in the Shenandoah county jail; the civil charges say Nestor and Gennarini killed Vega and altered the circumstances to make his death look like a suicide. [Hazleton Standard Speaker, 1/28/2011] Lisa Navarrete of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights group, says, “I’m disappointed that they weren’t convicted of all the charges.” The verdict “does show that these police officers did interfere in the case.” [New York Times, 1/27/2011] The two teenagers accused of beating Ramirez to death were recently convicted on federal charges (see October 14, 2010).

A person described as a “former Fox News insider” tells author and Media Matters columnist Eric Boehlert that Fox News is indeed “a propaganda outfit” calling itself a news provider. In an interview, the source tells Boehlert that Fox routinely reports false information to “prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats,” and calls the news channel a “purely partisan operation” that actively spins almost every news story to reflect a Republican/conservative slant (see November 3, 2003, April 1, 2009, April 1-6, 2009, and April 23, 2009). “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is,” the source says; “that stuff is just made up (see February 14, 2003).… It is their MO to undermine the [Obama] administration and to undermine Democrats (see December 2002, January 2009, February 24, 2009, April 3, 2009, and August 11, 2009). They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news” (see 1995, January 20, 2003, and July 2004). Boehlert says that “[e]veryone knows” Fox News has always reported news with a conservative slant: “Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago” (see October 7, 1996). But over time, Boehlert writes, Fox News has become “an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power.” The source confirms Boehlert’s observation, saying: “They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this facade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist[s].” The facade is one that, Boehlert writes, “permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.” The source says: “You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks. And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.” Virtually every hard-news story is presented in a way that either bolsters conservative ideology, criticizes liberal/progressive ideology, or both. “[A]nything—anything—that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it,” the source says. “If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is” (see June 8, 2004). The source says with some apparent sarcasm: “My internal compass [on ‘spinning’ a story] was to think like an intolerant meathead. You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.” Spin Training - The source reflects on how Fox News executives trained its employees to “spin” news stories, saying: “When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were ‘training’ you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots. CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing. We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two-year-old, raped her, sawed her head off, and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going, alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.” Changed over Time - Fox News officials always insisted that they were serving as “a bit of a counterpart to the screaming left wing lib media,” the source says. “So automatically you have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.” However, things have changed since the source first joined Fox: “For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view. And then two, three, five years into that it was, ‘We’re taking the Bush line on things,’ which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece. It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous. Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.” As time went on, the source says, the news reporting became ever more strident and more partisan. Siege Mentality - Using the source’s descriptions, Boehlert describes it as an “us-vs.-them mentality… a siege mentality that network boss Roger Ailes encourages, and one that colors the coverage his team produces.” The source confirms Boehlert’s observation, saying: “It was a kick-_ss mentality too. It was relentless and it never went away. If one controversy faded, godd_mn it they would find another one. They were in search of these points of friction real or imagined. And most of them were imagined or fabricated. You always have to seem to be under siege. You always have to seem like your values are under attack. The brain trust just knew instinctively which stories to do, like the War on Christmas” (a seasonal series of stories by Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly and others that regularly claim liberals, progressives, and the like “hate Christmas” and want to see it “destroyed”). It is rare for former Fox employees such as the source to share “insider” information after leaving, in part because of a strict non-disclosure agreement each exiting employee is asked to sign, and in part because of Ailes’s “siege mentality.” The source says that Ailes is bent on presenting a “unified Fox News front to the outside world,” to the point where he refuses to publicly criticize or critique other Fox employees regardless of how unprofessionally or even outlandishly they may behave on the air (see April 1, 2003, February 3-4, 2005, September 28-October 1, 2005, March 6, 2007, June 4-5, 2008, June 26, 2008, February 9-10, 2009, February 10, 2009, February 20, 2009, March 3, 2009, March 16-17, 2009, March 17-24, 2009, March 25, 2009, April 15, 2009, May 5-6, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 28, 2009, July 8, 2009, July 17, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 27, 2009, July 28-29, 2009, August 8, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 11, 2009, September 29, 2009, November 3, 2009, March 24, 2010, and October 3, 2010). The source says: “There may be internal squabbles. But what [Ailes] continually preaches is never piss outside the tent. When he gets really crazy is when stuff leaks out the door. He goes mental on that. He can’t stand that. He says in a dynamic enterprise like a network newsroom there’s going to be in fighting and ego, but he says keep it in the house.” Evidence Bolsters Source's Claims - Boehlert notes that along with the source’s contentions, a great deal of evidence surfaced in 2010 that showed Fox News to be deliberately propagandistic in its reporting (see March 13, 2009 and After, March 23-24, 2009, April 6-7, 2009, April 6-13, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 16, 2009, May 13-14, 2009, June 2, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 30, 2009, August 7, 2009, August 28, 2009, September 1, 2009, September 12, 2009, September 18, 2009, and November 5-8, 2009). He cites the recently leaked emails from inside Fox News in which a senior editor instructed his newsroom staffers to slant the news when reporting on issues such as climate change and health care reform (see October 27, 2009 and After and December 8, 2009 and After); the over 600 instances of Fox News personalities raising money, endorsing, and actively campaigning for Republican candidates and/or organizations; and the over $1 million donated by Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch to organizations dedicated to electing Republicans (see June 24, 2010 and After and September 30, 2010). Boehlert says that according to Media Matters estimates, Fox News has in essence donated $55 million worth of free airtime to Republican presidential hopefuls who also work for Fox News (see October 26, 2009). The source says Fox News is anything but a legitimate news outlet, and says both the Washington press corps and the general public has been duped by Murdoch’s relentless “fair and balanced” marketing campaign over the years. “People assume you need a license to call yourself a news channel,” the source says. “You don’t. So because they call themselves Fox News, people probably give them a pass on a lot of things.… I don’t think people understand that it’s an organization that’s built and functions by intimidation and bullying, and its goal is to prop up and support Republicans and the GOP and to knock down Democrats. People tend [to] think that stuff that’s on TV is real, especially under the guise of news. You’d think that people would wise up, but they don’t.” Source Critical of Other News Outlets for Not Criticizing Fox News - The source is harshly critical of other news outlets, including their reporters and pundits, for failing to criticize Fox News for its propaganda. The source explains: “They don’t have enough staff or enough balls or don’t have enough money or don’t have enough interest to spend the time it takes to expose Fox News. Or it’s not worth the trouble. If you take on Fox, they’ll kick you in the _ss. I’m sure most [journalists] know that.” Boehlert notes that journalists who have criticized Fox News have come under heavy fire from Fox News (see November 17-18, 2010). The source says he/she was perplexed in 2009, when Obama administration officials questioned Fox News’s legitimacy as a news source (see September 18-19, 2009 and October 11, 2009), only to have Washington press corps figures rush to Fox’s defense. “That blew me away,” the source says. The White House’s critique of Fox News “happens to be true” (see October 17, 2009). [Media Matters, 2/10/2011]

Donald Trump, addressing an audience at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference. [Source: Red Dog Report (.com)]Billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump tells an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that President Obama “came out of nowhere,” and adds: “In fact, I’ll go a step further: the people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.” Trump, who receives cheers for the statement, tells the assemblage that he is considering running for president in 2012 as a Republican. He is apparently trying to revive the so-called “birther” claims that Obama is not a valid American citizen (see (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, and Around June 28, 2010). In response, PolitiFact, a non-partisan political research organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, retraces Obama’s academic career: Obama attended kindergarten in Honululu, and moved with his family to Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1967, where he attended a Catholic elementary school, St. Francis Assisi Catholic, as well as Besuki Public School, until age 11. He then returned to Honolulu, where he lived with his maternal grandparents and attended a private college preparatory school, Punahou School, until he graduated with a high school diploma. In 1979, he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, transferred to Columbia University in 1981, and graduated from that university in 1983. He later attended, and graduated from, Harvard Law School in 1991. Trump’s claims apparently center on rumors that “no one knew him” at Columbia University, fueled in part by a 2008 editorial by the Wall Street Journal (see September 11, 2008), which repeated the “finding” of a Fox News “investigation” that found 400 classmates of Obama’s had not known him at the time. Another source is Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root, who attended Columbia at the same time as Obama and says: “I think the most dangerous thing you should know about Barack Obama is that I don’t know a single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me. I don’t have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia” (see September 5, 2008). Obama has himself said he did little socializing at Columbia, and though he had some involvement with the Black Students Organization and participated in anti-apartheid activities, spent most of his time studying: “Mostly, my years at Columbia were an intense period of study,” he has said. “When I transferred, I decided to buckle down and get serious. I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk.” The Journal noted a May 2008 story from the Associated Press containing an interview with Obama’s former roommate, Sohale Siddiqi, who verified Obama’s claims, and in January 2009, the New York Times published an interview with another roommate from the time, Phil Boerner, who also validated Obama’s claims of being a bookish, rather solitary student. PolitiFact interviews Cathie Currie, a professor at Adelphi University, who remembers Obama occasionally playing pick-up soccer with her and a group of friends on the lawn outside the library. She says he made an impression because of his athleticism, his maturity, and his wisdom, and she assumed that he was several years older than he actually was. “My sense of it was that he was keeping a low profile,” Currie tells the PolitiFact interviewer. “We’d ask him to go out with us for beers after soccer. He seemed like he wanted to, but then he’d step back and say, ‘Sorry, I’m going to the library.’” PolitiFact lists an array of articles covering Obama’s time at Occidental and Harvard Law School, noting that “[d]ozens of former classmates and teachers from those schools have publicly shared their recollections (and photos) of Obama. Obama was the president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review journal, for goodness sake.” PolitiFact has also found “plenty” of people who remember Obama from elementary and high school, in Indonesia and Hawaii. PolitiFact concludes: “We could get deeper into this but it seems like overkill. It’s abundantly clear that there are lots and lots of former classmates who remember Obama at every level of school. It’s true that Obama’s two years at Columbia are relatively undocumented. And far fewer classmates have publicly shared recollections of Obama from that period, as opposed to other school years before and after. At Columbia, Obama was a transfer student, he lived off campus, and by his and other accounts he buried himself in his studies and didn’t socialize much. But even so, there are several students who recall Obama at Columbia. In short, media accounts and biographies are filled with on-the-record, named classmates who remember Obama. Trump is certainly right that presidential candidates are heavily scrutinized. As even a basic online search confirms, Obama’s school years were, too. Trump’s claim that people who went to school with Obama ‘never saw him, they don’t know who he is’ is ridiculous. Or, to borrow Trump’s phrase, it’s crazy.” [St. Petersburg Times, 2/10/2011; JamesJoe, 2/17/2011]

Lara Logan, in a 2008 photo from Iraq. [Source: CBS News]Lara Logan, CBS’s chief foreign correspondent and a veteran war reporter, is beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob celebrating the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek in Cairo. Logan and her colleagues, including a small security force, are surrounded by over 200 people during a celebration in Tahrir Square. Logan is separated from her group and subjected to what CBS calls “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.” She is rescued by a group of women and 20 Egyptian soldiers, and returns to the United States the next day for medical treatment. The network does not release full details of her injuries, and Logan’s family asks that her privacy be respected while she recovers. [Washington Post, 2/15/2011]Fellow Journalist Accuses Logan of Trying to 'Become a Martyr' - Within days, American commentators and pundits begin blaming Logan for bringing her injuries upon herself. Nir Rosen, a journalist and foreign policy scholar, posts a series of comments on Twitter accusing Logan of trying to upstage CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who days before had been beaten by a crowd of Egyptians while covering the protests in Cairo. Rosen writes: “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal?” referencing General Stanley McChrystal (see September 22, 2009), who once led American troops in Afghanistan and whom Logan has defended in her reporting. Rosen then goes on to say that had Cooper also been sexually assaulted, he would have found it amusing: “Yes yes its wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too.” Reacting to her defense of McChrystal, he posts, “Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger,” and finishes his Twitter blast with, “Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women, which is still wrong, but if it was worse than [sic] I’m sorry.” Rosen quickly issues an apology and deletes some of his posts, calling his comments “a thoughtless joke” and saying that he “added insult to Ms. Logan’s injury.” Within 24 hours, he steps down from his position as a fellow of New York University’s Center on Law and Security. In a statement, the center’s executive director Karen Greenberg says that Rosen “crossed the line with his comments about Lara Logan.” She continues: “I am deeply distressed by what he wrote about Ms. Logan and strongly denounce his comments. They were cruel and insensitive and completely unacceptable. Mr. Rosen tells me that he misunderstood the severity of the attack on her in Cairo. He has apologized, withdrawn his remarks, and submitted his resignation as a fellow, which I have accepted. However, this in no way compensates for the harm his comments have inflicted. We are all horrified by what happened to Ms. Logan, and our thoughts are with her during this difficult time.” Rosen then sends an email claiming that Logan received undue media attention because she is white: “Had Logan been a non-white journalist, this story would have never made it to the news. Ahmed Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist, was killed in cold blood and nobody ever heard of him. Dozens of other women were harassed.” [National Review, 2/15/2011; The Atlantic, 2/15/2011; Washington Post, 2/16/2011; Huffington Post, 2/16/2011] A columnist for the conservative National Review, Jim Geraghty, calls Rosen’s comments “appalling.” [National Review, 2/15/2011] Rosen will attempt to explain his comments about Logan in an article for Salon (see February 17, 2011). Right-Wing Columnist: Logan Herself to Blame for Assault at Hands of Muslim 'Animals' - Right-wing pundit and columnist Debbie Schlussel claims that Logan’s assault is typical of how Muslims celebrate anything. She captions her blog post with the tagline, “Islam Fan Lara Logan Gets a Taste of Islam,” and writes: “Hey, sounds like the threats I get from American Muslims on a regular basis. Now you know what it’s like, Lara.” Schlussel goes on to mock Logan’s request for privacy concerning the incident, and seemingly blames Logan for deciding to try to cover the celebration: “So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows. Or so we’d hope. But in the case of the media vis-a-vis Islam, that’s a hope that’s generally unanswered. This never happened to her or any other mainstream media reporter when Mubarak was allowed to treat his country of savages in the only way they can be controlled. Now that’s all gone. How fitting that Lara Logan was ‘liberated’ by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the ‘liberation.’ Hope you’re enjoying the revolution, Lara!” Schlussel updates her blog post with a denial that she supported any “‘sexual assault’ or violence against Lara Logan,” insults her critics’ reading ability, and restates her belief that the assault on Logan is emblematic of Muslims around the world, whom she repeatedly calls “animals.” [Debbie Schlussel, 2/15/2011; Salon, 2/15/2011]Right-Wing Blogger: Logan's 'Liberal' Beliefs Caused Attack - Right-wing pundit Jim Hoft of the influential blog Gateway Pundit blames Logan’s “liberal belief system” for her attack, and, like Schlussel, blames Logan for the attack. Hoft writes: “Why did this attractive blonde female reporter wander into Tahrir Square last Friday? Why would she think this was a good idea? Did she not see the violence in the square the last three weeks? Did she not see the rock throwing?… Did her colleagues tell her about the Western journalists who were viciously assaulted on the Square? Did she forget about the taunts from the Egyptian thugs the day before? What was she thinking? Was it her political correctness that about got her killed? Did she think things would be different for her?… Lara Logan is lucky she’s not dead.” Like Schlussel, Hoft refuses to retract or apologize for his post, and says “the far left” is at fault for reacting badly “when their tenets are questioned. It must be hard when someone holds a mirror up and you see that your twisted agenda has caused such havoc and pain around the world. These warped individuals must have missed that day of school when they talked about playing with fire.” Hoft calls a report on his commentary by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters “a dishonest smear job.” [Jim Hoft, 2/16/2011; Media Matters, 2/16/2011] Commenters on Hoft’s blog post take his comments even further. One says Logan must have “the IQ of a tree stump.” Another chortles that she is now an “in-bedded reporter.” Another says, “I only wish it would have happened to [CBS news anchor] Katie Couric.” Another commenter says, “Shame that this is the only cure for a brain dead liberal!” And one commentator, echoing Schlussel, writes, “Hey, if you can’t handle rape, stay out of a Muslim country.” A number of commenters deny that Logan is a victim, because, as one writes, she “knowingly walked into” the situation and therefore is herself to blame, and one says for Logan to expect “a free pass” for being a woman in an Islamic society is cause enough for her to be assaulted. Many commenters question the entire incident, claiming that it is a “liberal fantasy” designed to give conservatives an opportunity to portray conservatives as racist and misogynistic. [Jim Hoft, 2/16/2011] Progressive blogger and pundit Bob Cesca responds to both Hoft and Schlussel: “There aren’t sufficient obscenities to describe Hoft and others his filth. Like Debbie Schlussel, for example.” [Bob Cesca, 2/16/2011]

Leo C. Berman. [Source: Texas Tribune]Texas State Representative Leo C. Berman (R-TX), discussing his proposed bill to require presidential candidates to show their birth certificates to the Texas secretary of state, says the bill centers on “doubts” about whether President Obama was actually born in the US, and therefore is a US citizen. Berman is referring to the ongoing “birther” controversy that has cast doubt on Obama’s citizenship (see (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, Around June 28, 2010, and February 10, 2011). “We don’t think the president was vetted, and it’s just that simple,” Berman tells a reporter. “I read different things that say he was born in Hawaii, and then I read the governor [of Hawaii] can’t find anything that says he was born in Hawaii.” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, investigates Berman’s claim that Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) “can’t find anything that says” Obama was born in his state. A PolitiFact researcher contacts Berman for clarification, and Berman says: “I just listen to the news, I don’t write it down. It’s been on several news stations that he [Abercrombie] said he was going to resolve this once and for all, and when he tried to… he couldn’t find anything.” Berman has expressed his doubts about Obama’s heritage before, telling a Lubbock, Texas, reporter that “the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place.” While Obama’s father was born in Kenya, Obama himself was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama has released a valid copy of his birth certificate (see June 13, 2008), and the certificate has been validated numerous times (see June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, and July 28, 2009). However, Berman says the document released by the Obama campaign is the “short form” certificate, and questions why Obama has never released the “long form” certificate. Hawaiian officials have long debunked the idea that there is any significant difference between the two versions (see July 1, 2009). Abercrombie has expressed his anger over the “birther” controversy, and says he intends to seek ways to release more “explicit” documentation about Obama’s birth, presumably the “long form” that by Hawaiian law must remain in state government possession (see December 24, 2010). Berman is apparently referring to an article on the conservative news blog WorldNetDaily (WND), which in January reported that Abercrombie suggested that the “long form” certificate for Obama “may not exist” (see January 18, 2011). Hollyword reporter Mike Evans, who represents himself as a longtime friend of Abercrombie’s, has told a KQRS-FM interviewer in Minnesota that Abercrombie told him he searched “everywhere” at Hawaii hospitals and that “there is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii. Absolutely no proof at all that he was born in Hawaii.” However, Evans was later quoted on FoxNews.com as saying he misspoke, and confirmed that he never spoke to Abercrombie at all once his “friend” became governor of Hawaii. Hawaii Health Department spokesperson Janice Okubo tells PolitiFact that Berman is incorrect in believing that there is any real difference between the “long form” and “short form” certificates: “When you request a birth certificate, the one you get looks exactly like the one posted on his site. That’s the birth certificate.” PolitiFact finds Berman’s statements entirely false. [St. Petersburg Times, 2/27/2011]

Michael Beard. [Source: MinnPost]Michael Beard, a Republican state representative from Minnesota and an eight-year veteran of the Minnesota House Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee, advocates resuming coal mining in his state. His reasoning: God has created a planet that provides unlimited natural resources. “God is not capricious. He’s given us a creation that is dynamically stable,” he tells a reporter. “We are not going to run out of anything.” Beard is drafting legislation that would overturn Minnesota’s moratorium on coal-fired power plants. He says that God will not allow humans to destroy the planet, no matter what they do. He recalls working on his family farm in Pennsylvania, which he says was mined three times for coal and now produces barley, wheat, and pine trees. “Did we temporarily disrupt the face of the earth? Yes, but when we were done, we put it all back together again.” He continues: “It is the height of hubris to think we could [destroy the earth].… How did Hiroshima and Nagasaki work out?” he asks, referring to the two Japanese cities destroyed by atomic bombs in World War II. “We destroyed that, but here we are, 60 years later and they are tremendously effective and livable cities. Yes, it was pretty horrible. But, can we recover? Of course we can.” Beard’s thesis is at odds with most climate scientists, who say that burning coal results in severe and perhaps irreparable harm to the planet, and contributes to widespread human suffering. According to columnist Dan Shelby, “Most of them are convinced that there is a point at which we will never be able to put it all back together again.” John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences, writes a response to Beard’s statements noting the flaws in Beard’s reasoning. Beard tells Shelby that he reads a lot about science, and cites a number of conservative blogs as his sources. His primary source is Dr. Patrick Michaels, who has admitted that he receives the bulk of his funding for research from fossil fuel producers. Shelby writes: “It is understandable. Mike Beard is a free-market conservative and pro-business. No one who calls himself those things can afford global warming to be true. There is a political belief that solving global warming will destroy American business. American business deplores government interference. Global warming regulation and legislation requires governments to act.” Both Abraham and Beard have expressed a desire to open a dialogue on the subject. [MinnPost, 2/15/2011; Huffington Post, 2/16/2011]

Nir Rosen. [Source: Media Bistro]Author and columnist Nir Rosen explains what he meant to say in a burst of Twitter posts that forced him to resign from his position as a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security (see February 11-16, 2011). Rosen made a series of comments, or tweets, that disparaged and mocked Lara Logan, a CBS reporter who was beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob of Egyptians celebrating the fall of the Mubarak regime. Rosen notes: “I undid a long career defending the weak and victims of injustice. There is no excuse for what I wrote. At the time, I did not know that the attack against Lara Logan was so severe, or included apparent sexual violence. Even so, any violence against anyone is wrong. I’ve apologized, lost my job, and humiliated myself and my family. But I, at least, don’t want to go down looking like a sexist pig. I am not. I am a staunch supporter of women’s rights, gay rights, and the rights of the weak anywhere in the world.… I continue to apologize for this comment because it in no way reflects the way I feel about women or violence. Sexual assault is never funny, and it is a terrible crime. I have apologized to Ms. Logan and her family, and to victims of sexual violence everywhere.” Rosen says his posts were “disgusting comment[s] born from dark humor I have developed working in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Lebanon.” However, he continues, his tweets became a focus for “ideological opportunists who have used this ordeal for their personal gain. People whose words have helped create and justify war and genocide are now jumping onto this issue to attack me for my previous journalism (which, naturally, I stand by).” Rosen then makes what he calls “the point I really was trying to make. Had Logan been a non-white, non-famous journalist, this story would have never made it to the news. Ahmed Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist, was killed in cold blood and nobody ever heard of him. Dozens of other women were harassed and nobody will ever know their names. Credible accounts indicate that the assaults on women took place largely on the Friday of the victory celebration, when millions of non-demonstrators joined the party. Countless women (Egyptian and foreign, journalists and others) have reported being harassed and assaulted in Tahrir Square that Friday, mostly, it seems, by non-revolutionaries.… So why all the focus on Logan? The US media did not care when Egyptian journalists (or any other Egyptian) were being jailed. Only when pretty white people showed up did Egypt really start to matter, and then, they were preoccupied with the scary Muslim Brotherhood possibly taking over, or what would happen to poor Israel now that there was a ‘threat’ of democracy in Egypt. This is why I wrote in a Twitter that I was already rolling my eyes. Even before we knew what happened to her, I knew how to anticipate the media response in the United States. So Logan and Anderson Cooper [a CNN reporter who was attacked by Egyptian protesters days before Logan was attacked] have become the story, instead of the thousands of Egyptians who have far more compelling stories. Meanwhile, I have not seen any condemnation of the pure hatred, racism, and vitriol that I’ve seen spewed all over the Internet in response to the Logan story. I’ve seen Arabs, Muslims, and Egyptians called animals and pigs in tens of websites and, right under the Logan stories, read vile rhetoric about them that would never be acceptable if used against any other group.” Rosen’s anger at Logan, whom he says supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, overcame his better judgment. However, “her destructive reporting has nothing to do with the crime she suffered, nothing at all. I point it out now only to explain my thinking, not to justify or defend the hurt I caused.” He asks why he is being vilified when others have called for the assassination of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (see (Early January 2011)) or the jailing of more journalists, and calls some of the criticism of his tweets “sanctimonious, [e]specially when they come from people who support every kind of American war (or Israeli war), tolerate racism against Arabs and Muslims, and—while focusing on the plight of celebrities—ignore outrages like our scorched-earth policies in Kandahar.” Rosen believes he was subjected to what he says was an undue level of criticism because he is “a leftist opponent of American wars… and I have a hard time taking a lot of the sanctimonious condemnation from right-wingers very seriously, given what right-wing pundits say on a daily basis.” He concludes: “I hope that one day people will believe me when I say that I did not mean it and that it does not reflect who I am. I hope that people will take time to read my work and understand that I have spent my career taking a lot of heat for defending victims of all kinds, not just Arabs and Muslims. And I hope Ms. Logan and other victims of sexual violence will one day forgive me for my terrible mistake.” [Salon, 2/17/2011]

Carlos F. Lam, during a video conference. [Source: Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism]Carlos F. Lam, a Republican deputy prosecutor and party activist from Johnson County, Indiana, sends an email to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) suggesting that Walker and an aide set up what Lam calls a “‘false flag’ operation” to fake a physical attack on Walker by a union member. Teachers, union members, and thousands of others are protesting Walker’s attempts to strip most collective bargaining rights from public employees. Lam writes that the situation presents “a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation. If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions.” Lam continues: “Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] and umbrella union organizations in the protest. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions.” Lam will eventually admit to writing the email and resign his position with Johnson County. [Wisconsin Watch, 3/24/2011; Indianapolis Star, 3/25/2011]Contents of Lam's Email - Lam’s entire email to Walker reads: “This Hoosier public employee is asking that you stay strong and NOT cave in to union demands! The way that government works has to change, and—by all appearances—that must begin in WI [Wisconsin]. We cannot have public unions hold the taxpayer hostage with their outrageous demands. As an aside, I’ve been involved in GOP politics here in Indiana for 18 years, and I think that the situation in WI presents a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation. If you could employ an associate who pretends to be the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the public unions. Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.” [Wisconsin Watch, 2/19/2011]Initial Denials, Claims that Email Account Hacked - Walker’s office denies ever receiving the email, though the email is turned over from the governor’s office. Cullen Werwie, Walker’s press secretary, issues a statement reading: “Certainly we do not support the actions suggested in [the] email. Governor Walker has said time and again that the protesters have every right to have their voice heard, and for the most part the protests have been peaceful. We are hopeful that the tradition will continue.” Lam initially denies sending the email, saying he was shopping with his family when the email was sent, and claims his Hotmail email account has been hacked. Subsequent examination of the email’s headers conclude that the email was sent from Indianapolis. “I am flabbergasted and would never advocate for something like this,” Lam tells reporters, “and would like everyone to be sure that that’s just not me.” Of Walker, Lam says: “I think he’s trying to do what he has to do to get his budget balanced. But jeez, that’s taking it a little bit to the extreme. Jeez!” Lam tells reporters he intends to file a police report later in the week. Walker’s email is released to the press as part of an open-records lawsuit settlement. Madison, Wisconsin police chief Noble Wray says that both he and Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz are troubled by the email. “I find it very unsettling and troubling that anyone would consider creating safety risks for our citizens and law enforcement officers,” Wray says. Lam’s boss, Johnson County prosecutor Brad Cooper, defends Lam, saying, “Whether there’s rules of professional conduct that apply or not is irrelevant, because he didn’t send it.” [Wisconsin Watch, 3/24/2011]Lam Admits to Sending Email, Resigns - After the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism publishes a story about the email, and Lam issues his denials, he calls Cooper and tells him he will resign. According to Cooper, Lam told him he had been up all night thinking about it: “He wanted to come clean, I guess, and said he is the one who sent that email,” says Cooper. Lam comes into the office that morning and delivers his resignation verbally. After reviewing Lam’s email, criminal defense lawyer Erik Guenther says that if Lam was actively involved in devising such a scheme, he could be held accountable for conspiracy to obstruct justice, “but an unsolicited and idiotic suggestion itself probably is not a crime.” Madison criminal defense lawyer Michael Short says that if Lam wrote the email, he should be investigated for a possible breach of the Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct, for “suggesting that officials in the Walker administration commit a felony,” namely, misconduct in public office. Those rules state that “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” amount to professional misconduct. They are the rules to which lawyers are held accountable by the Indiana lawyer discipline system. However, Cooper says he has no intentions of launching any investigation into Lam’s conduct. Cooper issues a brief statement announcing Lam’s resignation over what the statement calls a “foolish suggestion.” [Wisconsin Watch, 3/24/2011; Brad Cooper, 3/24/2011 ; Indianapolis Star, 3/25/2011]Lam Disparaged Unions in Previous Postings - Lam, who shuts his Facebook and other social media accounts down after the email is revealed to the public, made one Web posting that called Indiana “an unsustainable public worker gravy train bubble.” In another posting, Lam wrote that “unions & companies that feed at the gov’t trough will fight tooth & nail against anything that un-feathers their nests.” His Facebook profile reads that he believes in “guns, gold and gasoline.” [Wisconsin Watch, 3/24/2011]

Tea party activist Mark Williams, who resigned from the Tea Party Express for racially inflammatory comments (see July 14, 2010, July 15, 2010, July 17-18, 2010, and July 19-23, 2010) and who now heads a tea party-affiliated political action committee (see August 6, 2010), declares on his blog, “MarkTalk,” that he intends to “infiltrate” the ranks of protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, and Sacramento, California, and “expose” them as “goons.” He calls for volunteers to join him. Williams writes that he wants to infiltrate the ranks of Wisconsin protesters who have taken to the streets of Madison to protest Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) and his attempts to cripple the ability of unions to organize among public sector workers. Williams says he and his prospective fellows will dress up like members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU): “[W]e are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there… we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like ‘screw the taxpayer!’ and ‘you OWE me!’ to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us)… we will echo those slogans in angry sounding tones to the cameras and the reporters.” Williams later updates his blog post to report that tea partiers in several other states have called him to share “their own creative ruses” for embarrasing the union demonstrators. “Several have also reminded me that we have a distinct advantage in that the SEIU primarily represents non-English speaking illegal aliens so we will be the ones whose comments will make air!!!!” he writes, and continues: “Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media, and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.” The progressive magazine Mother Jones, reporting on the blog post, writes: “Thus far, demonstrations and counterdemonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, have been peaceful.… Anti-union protesters, led by media mogul Andrew Breitbart, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, and ‘Joe the Plumber,’ largely fizzled after a rally on Saturday. And the image of union workers that Williams seeks to portray seems to run uphill against the images of the employees’ leaders seen thus far. But as labor disputes spread to other states, it remains to be seen whether tactics like those proposed by Williams will be effective in embarassing the public employees… or embarrasing the tea party ‘plants’ themselves.” [Mother Jones, 2/20/2011] Sometime after the press begins reporting on Williams’s blog post, the post disappears from the blog.

Jack Davis, a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives from the Buffalo, New York, area, suggests that Hispanic farmworkers be deported from the US, and African-Americans from the inner cities be bused to farm country and made to pick the crops. Davis, an industrialist from Akron, makes his comments in an endorsement hearing held by local tea party activists. In 2008, he made similar comments to a Tonawanda News reporter, when he said: “We have a huge unemployment problem with black youth in our cities. Put them on buses, take them out there [to the farms], and pay them a decent wage; they will work.” Many listeners then and now say Davis is, in essence, advocating a return to slavery. After hearing Davis’s comments, Republican leaders deliver their endorsement to another candidate, Assemblywoman Jane L. Corwin. Amherst County GOP chairman Marshall Wood says, “I was thunderstruck” when he heard Davis’s statements. “Maybe in 1860 that might have been seen by some as an appropriate comment, but not now.” Davis shrugs off the reaction to his comments, saying merely, “It’s politics.” Davis’s spokesman W. Curtis Ellis says of Davis’s comments, “It may not be politically correct and it may not be racially correct, but when you have African-American people in Buffalo who do not have jobs and are out of work, why are you bringing people into this country illegally to take jobs?” Davis, Corwin, and others are running in a special election to replace Representative Chris Lee (R-NY), who recently resigned his seat after revelations surfaced about his Internet flirtation with a woman not his wife. Wyoming County GOP chairman Gordon Brown says Davis “repeatedly almost disqualified himself” during the hearing by contradicting typical party positions, raging against illegal immigration and free trade policies. “The most racist part was where he said he was busing the blacks in to pick the vegetables,” Brown says. When Davis made his comment, “the room sort of went silent. It was like, ‘Did I just hear that?’” Davis has run for office as a Democrat three times in the past. He is now attempting to secure enough signatures to run as a tea party candidate. The election will be held May 24. The Democratic candidate opposing Corwin will be Kathleen Hochul, the Erie County clerk. [Buffalo News, 3/15/2011; Raw Story, 3/17/2011; USA Today, 3/21/2011] Buffalo News columnist Rod Watson, a conservative African-American, later complains of the “manufactured outrage” over Davis’s comments, and will praise Davis’s suggestion as “busing jobless young blacks to farms so they can learn work skills while earning an honest dollar.” He will say Davis’s comments are far less insulting than those recently made by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS), a possible 2012 presidential candidate who has extolled the virtues of white supremacist groups. “A white man saying what’s good for blacks is always grist for those looking for advantage in aggrievement,” Watson will write. “It’s part of the unwritten rules on race in a nation still struggling with the issue that only blacks can say such things about blacks, just as only whites can make ‘redneck’ jokes.” Watson will note that African-American radio host Ted Kirkland says: “I’ve advocated that on my show. There’s nothing wrong with hard work and getting your hands dirty.” And Watson will quote Democratic legislator Betty Jean Grant, who says, “Republicans won’t hire black youths for any kind of jobs,” and says she “saw nothing racist” in Davis’s comment. Watson will admit that some find it disconcerting when a white millionaire states his opinion about what should be done for, or to, poor African-Americans. “It’s also fair to ask how many blacks Davis has hired, or how many jobs he has funded in light of his expressed interest in unemployed African-Americans,” he will write. He will conclude that the idea itself must be considered separately from its “suspect source.” [Buffalo News, 3/17/2011] News and blog Web site BlakNewz is more outraged; its administrator will write: “Is that like black slaves picking cotton for the massa? Why not bus in the poor white people in New York State and nearby states to pick the crops?” [BlakNewz, 3/15/2011] Hochul will win a narrow victory over Corwin, delivering the NY-26 seat to the Democratic Party for the first time in decades. Davis, a “tea party” candidate, will garner 9 percent of the vote; in his concession speech, Davis will tell his listeners, “The country needs me.” [Buffalo News, 5/26/2011]

Mike Huckabee (R-AR), the former governor of Arkansas, currently a host on Fox News and a potential 2012 presidential candidate, tells a gathering at the National Press Club that it is “useless” to get into the seemingly endless debate on President Obama’s citizenship (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, and Around June 28, 2010) as recently revived by billionaire Donald Trump (see February 10, 2011). “I find it unnecessary, useless, and frankly a bit unnecessary to get into all sorts of debates over President Obama’s religion or the authenticity of his birth,” he says. “I know for some people that it is an obsession. It is not with me.” Huckabee has said that if Obama were not a US citizen, that fact would have emerged during the 2008 presidential primary. He also acknowledges that Obama is a Christian (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008) and calls Obama a good role model for fathers, saying: “I have no disagreement with President Obama as a human being. In fact, I’ll go so far to say one of the things I respect very much is the role model that he has served as a husband and a father. And I think he has been an exemplary husband to his wife and an extraordinary father to his daughters. Frankly, America needs a good role model like that.” Huckabee emphasizes that he does not agree with Obama’s policies, saying, “But this is not an attack on President Obama, the person, even though you will see sharp elbows at the policies that he has put forth, specifically, many of the economic policies.” [St. Petersburg Times, 2/28/2011]

Mike Huckabee (R-AR), the former governor of Arkansas, currently a host on Fox News and a potential 2012 presidential candidate, speculates that President Obama may have been born in Kenya. If this were true, Obama would not be eligible to be president. Huckabee states, incorrectly, that Obama grew up in Kenya. Huckabee is appearing on a radio show hosted by conservative Steve Malzberg. The host brings up the subject of Obama’s “controversial” birth certificate (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, and Around June 28, 2010), as recently revived by billionaire Donald Trump (see February 10, 2011), and asks, “Don’t you think we deserve to know more about this man?” Huckabee responds: “I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American. When he gave the bust back to the Brits, the bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British (see June 29, 2009). But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, believes that Huckabee is echoing discredited claims recently made by conservative author Dinesh D’Souza, who accused Obama of being an “anti-colonialist” and covert supporter of Kenyan extremists (see September 12, 2010, September 12, 2010 and After, September 12, 2010 and After, September 16, 2010, September 17, 2010, September 23, 2010, and September 23-24, 2010). Contrary to Huckabee’s assertions, Obama did not grow up in Kenya. He had virtually no contact with his Kenyan father and never met his paternal grandfather, whom D’Souza wrote had such a powerful influence on him. Instead, Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. After the interview on Malzberg’s show, Huckabee corrects his error, saying: “On Monday, while on Steve Malzberg’s radio show on New York’s WOR Radio, I was asked about the President Obama’s birth certificate issue. In my answer, I simply misspoke when I alluded to President Obama growing up in ‘Kenya’ and meant to say Indonesia.” PolitiFact notes that in the past, Huckabee has warned against buying into the idea that Obama is not a US citizen, affirmed Obama’s Christianity, and praised Obama as a role model for fathers (see February 23, 2011). [St. Petersburg Times, 2/28/2011]

A report on a psychological study conducted and written by Eric Hehman of the University of Delaware and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology finds that race plays an intrinsic role in many voters’ perceptions of President Obama, and plays a powerful role in whether or not Americans believe Obama is a US citizen. Although definitive proof of Obama’s US citizenship has long been publicly available (see June 13, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008), for many, especially on the right, the issue remains either unsettled or, for some, settled against Obama, whom they firmly believe to be either a foreign citizen or some sort of “illegal alien.” Hehman’s study concludes that racial prejudice plays a strong role in the continued refusal by some to accept Obama’s citizenship. The study compares voter perceptions of Obama with his vice president, Joseph Biden, whom Hehman calls “the most comparable target” with Obama. Major Disparity between 'High-Prejudice,' 'Low-Prejudice' Whites - Behman writes: “The influence of racial prejudice in contemporary US society is typically manifested in subtle, indirect forms of bias. Due to prevailing norms of equality, most whites attempt to avoid appearing biased in their evaluations of blacks, in part because of a genuine desire to live up to their egalitarian standards, but also because of concern regarding social censure. As a consequence, whites’ prejudice is more likely to be expressed in discriminatory responses when these actions can be justified by other factors.” The study asked 295 people, both black and white, to evaluate the performance and “Americanism” of the two politicians in late 2009. It also included six questions, widely used in psychology, to gauge whether folks are more or less prejudiced against blacks. The study finds, “Overall, as expected, white participants tended to view Obama as less American,” and as a direct result they judge him as “worse-performing” as a national leader than Biden. “Moreover, whites higher in prejudice rated Obama as less American and as performing more poorly as president.” “Low-prejudice” whites tend to see Obama as higher-performing and either “as American” or “more American” than Biden: “Why low prejudice whites perceived Obama as higher in Americanism and performing better than Biden is not entirely clear. One possibility is that people see presidents, as the primary national leader, as more prototypical of the group and thus more American than vice presidents. Alternatively, the differential response of low prejudice whites to Obama and Biden may reflect their concern with appearing nonprejudiced, particularly during a period when the election of a black president was lauded as a sign of progress for not only blacks but America more generally.” The study examines the “prejudice scores” of the study participants, and finds “higher prejudice predicted whites seeing Obama as less American, which, in turn, predicted lower evaluations of his performance.” Blacks tended to rate Obama’s performance higher than Biden’s, but do not view their “Americanism” as significantly different. Hehman finds: “Overall, the results support our hypothesis that negative evaluations of Obama by white participants may be racially motivated. Whites are guarded about openly endorsing the view that blacks are less American than whites, which may suppress overall mean differences in performance ratings and perceptions of Obama being un-American. However, bias in viewing blacks as less American than whites appeared to implicitly underlie whites’ negative evaluations of his performance. Also, consistent with previous research, blacks did not demonstrate such a relationship, nor did Americanism mediate the relationship between prejudice and performance evaluations when Vice President Biden acted as target for either whites or blacks. Whereas previous work has linked white prejudice with negative perceptions of Obama, the current work reveals a mechanism that may be largely responsible for this effect, Obama’s non-prototypicality (largely in terms of his race) and thus reduced perceptions of his Americanism.” Hehman notes that media speculations that the “birther” controversy is fueled by racial prejudice are “sadly the case. As the United States approaches important decisions regarding issues such as economic reform, health care, and overseas military interventions, the intrusion of racial attitudes in the evaluation of political leaders’ performance is ironically inconsistent with what many believe to be ‘American.’” Response to 'Long Form' Certificate Release - USA Today will report on Hehman’s study on April 27, the same day that Obama releases his “long form” birth certificate in an attempt to put an end to the controversy over Obama’s citizenship (see April 27, 2011). Reporter Dan Vergano will ask Hehman for his response to the release in the context of the study, and Hehman will respond via email: “While I can’t speak to the birther movement specifically, this controversy and others like it are what initially sparked my interest and led to the recent publication [of the study]. President Obama has consistently faced a number of controversies that are, frankly, not based on fact. We thought that his critics’ persistence in pursuing these fantasies, such as Obama’s birth in a foreign nation or being a Muslim, in the face of facts saying otherwise, might be indirectly rooted in racism. Our research investigated whether people who held racial prejudices might be more likely to see Obama as ‘un-American,’ presumably because of his race. Indeed, this is what we found. Whites who were prejudiced against blacks were more likely to see Obama as un-American, and in turn, evaluated Obama as performing more poorly as president. Whites who were not prejudiced, and blacks in general, did not do so. Additionally and importantly, this relationship was only found with Obama, as prejudiced whites did not see Vice President Joe Biden as un-American, despite the fact that Obama and Biden share political party affiliation and agenda.” He will conclude: “The April 27 release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate is a situation where President Obama and the White House eventually had to exert effort to quell a controversy that should never have been an issue. Our research indicates that one reason it may have initially become an issue at all has more to do with his race than his place of birth. We find that racial prejudice can, in part, influence evaluations of an elected leader, a phenomenon which is quite ‘un-American.’” [USA Today, 4/27/2011]

Bradley Manning, an Army whistleblower who allegedly leaked thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, is stripped naked overnight in the brig he is being held at. According to David E. Coombs, Manning’s lawyer, in the morning, Manning is forced to stand naked outside his cell for inspection, after which his clothes are returned to him. “This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification,” Coombs writes the next day. “It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated. Private Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight. No other detainee at the brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation.” First Lieutenant Brian Villiard, a Marine spokesman, comments that a brig duty supervisor had ordered Manning’s clothing taken from him. He says that the step was “not punitive,” is in accordance with brig rules, but he cannot say more. [New York Times, 3/3/2011]

Georgia State Representative Mark Hatfield (R-GA) introduces his so-called “birther” bill, House Bill 401, which would require presidential and vice-presidential candidates to prove their citizenship before being placed on Georgia’s elections ballot. “I think the issue with our sitting president has been left unresolved for a significant length of time that people have concerns,” Hatfield says. “But this is not just about our current president. It’s about enforcing the constitutional provisions for anyone who seeks the office of presidency.” Ninety-three fellow representatives, all Republicans, sign on to Hatfield’s bill as co-sponsors. By the next day, March 3, 20 withdraw their names, and several more withdraw the following day. On March 4, local attorney and Libertarian Loren Collins publishes a scathing op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noting that Hatfield’s bill would create requirements for president that do not exist in the US Constitution. Noting that the bill would require candidates to affirm that they have never held dual citizenships in other countries, Collins writes: “There is not and never has been any constitutional rule mandating that the president ‘has never held dual or multiple citizenship.’ This is pure birther fantasy, a nonexistent bit of pseudo law that an attorney such as Hatfield should know better than to promote.” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, determines that Collins’s claim of the bill’s extraconstitutionality is true. When PolitiFact contacts Collins for comment, the lawyer reminds it that Article II of the Constitution reads: “No Person except a natural born Citizen… shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The language does not and should not exclude candidates who are or were dual citizens, Collins says. Foreign law decided who qualifies for dual citizenship, and foreign law should not decide who is eligible to be US president. Hatfield tells PolitiFact that he does not consider himself a “birther,” but wants proof that Obama is indeed eligible to be president. “We’ve seen a computer-generated summary of a live birth but not the particulars of his birth on a long form,” Hatfield says (see June 13, 2008 and July 1, 2009). “Congress has never created an enforcement mechanism, so it is up to the states to step up and fill the gap.” Hatfield says the Founders thought that presidents should be born in the United States, their parents should be citizens, and dual citizens should be barred to avoid foreign influence. That’s why the Constitution uses the term “natural born citizen” instead of “citizen,” he says. PolitiFact writes, “Under Hatfield’s definition, Obama couldn’t be president.” Neither could Obama’s 2008 challenger, John McCain (R-AZ), who was born to a US military family in the Panama Canal Zone (see March 14 - July 24, 2008). PolitiFact learns from legal experts on US citizenship that Hatfield’s “natural born” concept does not exist in the law. Law professor Peter Spiro says: “If that [the bill] passes in Georgia’s Statehouse, it will be challenged and it will be struck down as unconstitutional. I am 100 percent confident.” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, says Hatfield’s bill contains a dual-citizenship ban that does not exist in the Constitution. “It’s trying to add an additional requirement to the eligibility for president,” von Spakovsky says. According to PolitiFact, legal scholars agree that the Founders intended to block naturalized citizens, or those who became citizens after their birth, from becoming president. However, Spiro notes, the law has never been tested, the Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue, and no candidate with dual citizenship or who was born outside the country has won the presidency. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3/1/2011; St. Petersburg Times, 3/4/2011] Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (R-GA) says he does not believe the bill will win passage. “I’m not promoting the bill or squelching discussion. We’ll have a discussion, and then we’ll see what happens,” he says. “I believe President Obama is the duly elected president of the United States. I’ve never followed the ‘birther’ school of thought.” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3/2/2011]

Iowa State Senator Kent Sorenson (R-IA) introduces a bill, SB 368, that would require candidates for president or vice president to file a certified copy of their birth certificate along with their affidavit of candidacy in order to be eligible to be included on the Iowa election ballot. Sorenson has long identified himself as a believer in the “birther” conspiracy theory that alleges President Obama is not a US citizen (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, and Around June 28, 2010). The bill reads in part: “A candidate for president or vice president shall attach to and file with the affidavit of candidacy a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate certified by the appropriate official in the candidate’s state of birth. The certified copy shall be made part of the affidavit of candidacy and shall be made available for public inspection in the same manner as the affidavit of candidacy.… A candidate for president or vice president who does not comply with the requirements of this section shall not be eligible for placement on the ballot as a candidate for president or vice president anywhere in the state.” The bill does not clear a deadline for submission, but may be reintroduced in the next session. Sorenson previously introduced a bill that would recognize only silver and gold as legal tender in Iowa. He recently told an Iowa reporter that his constituents elected him to the Iowa Senate to “burn this place down. They want me to do battle. And I understand that.” [WorldNetDaily, 3/6/2011; Mother Jones, 3/25/2011]

US State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley calls the treatment of alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” The remarks are made at a talk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about how new media are impacting foreign policy, during a question-and-answer session. Crowley is asked about what he thinks about WikiLeaks and the US “torturing a prisoner in a military brig.” After criticising the conditions of Manning’s detention, Crowley adds, “None the less Bradley Manning is in the right place,” and goes on to say that in Washington’s view, “there is sometimes a need for secrets… for diplomatic progress to be made.” When the remarks become news, Crowley will issue a clarification: “What I said was my personal opinion. It does not reflect an official [US government] policy position. I defer to the Department of Defense regarding the treatment of Bradley Manning.” [BBC, 3/12/2011]

State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley is forced to resign from his position under pressure from the White House following his criticism of the treatment of whistleblower Bradley Manning (see March 12, 2011). According to CNN, White House officials are “furious” about Crowley’s statement that the treatment of Manning is “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” In his resignation statement, Crowley attributes his resignation to the media coverage of his remarks: “Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation.” However, CNN adds, “Crowley has told friends that he is deeply concerned that mistreatment of Manning could undermine the legitimate prosecution of the young private.” In addition, Crowley thinks he has the administration’s best interests at heart because “he thinks any mistreatment of Manning could be damaging around the world to President Obama, who has tried to end the perception that the United States tortures prisoners.” [CNN, 3/13/2011]

Rock musician Ted Nugent, an outspoken conservative, calls Attorney General Eric Holder a “racist punk” in a Washington Times column. Holder is African-American. Nugent is writing in response to Holder’s recent request that the city of Dayton, Ohio, lower the passing threshold on the test to become a police officer because not enough black recruits passed the exam. Nugent does not inform his readers that the Justice Department originally sued Dayton over the exams in September 2008, while Bush appointee Michael Mukasey was attorney general, nor that the department settled the lawsuit in February 2009. Instead, Nugent calls the request “yet another ugly, blatant, and defining racist move” for the Obama Justice Department, writing: “Instead of attracting the best and brightest to serve the public, racist Mr. Holder will now ensure that the good residents of Dayton will be protected by dunce cops who score the equivalent of a D or F on the entrance exam.… What Mr. Holder clearly wants by forcing his racist substandards on the good citizens of Dayton is to ensure people he favors get a fair shake at becoming cops by lowering the standards to such a degree that there might as well not be any entrance exams.” Nugent says Holder may invite members of the New Black Panther Party to move to Dayton and become police officers, “where they could then legally intimidate white citizens without fear of reprisal from Mr. Holder’s Department of Injustice. If the citizens complained, he could scold them and call them ‘racial cowards.’” Holder wants to stuff the Dayton Police Department with “functionally illiterate” blacks, Nugent asserts: “the very bottom of the barrel.” He concludes: “Racism lives, and it lives in the Obama crony administration. How sad.” [Dayton Daily News, 2/17/2011; Washington Times, 3/14/2011; Media Matters, 3/15/2011] In 2007, Nugent invited then-Senator Barack Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate, and another senator, Barbara Boxer (D-CA), to “suck on my machine gun,” called Obama a “piece of s_hit,” called Senator Hillary Clinton (D-IL), another Democratic presidential contender, a “worthless b_tch,” and called Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) a “worthless wh_re” (see August 21-24, 2007).

Billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump, who has begun publicly questioning President Obama’s US citizenship (see February 10, 2011), explores the “controversy” on ABC’s morning talk show Good Morning America. In an interview conducted on his private plane, “Trump Force One,” Trump implies that Obama is lying about being born in Hawaii (see October 1, 2007, April 18, 2008, Before October 27, 2008, August 4, 2010, and February 28, 2011), says he is a “little” skeptical of Obama’s citizenship, and says the “birthers” who express their doubts about Obama should not be dismissed as “idiots” (see February 17, 2010). “Growing up no one knew him,” Trump claims. “The whole thing is very strange.” As he has in recent interviews, Trump says he is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. He implies that he can buy his way into victory, saying he is willing to spend $600 million on a primary run. “I have much more than that,” he says. “That’s one of the nice things. Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put up $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.” Asked if his talk of a candidacy is anything more than a publicity stunt, he replies, “I have never been so serious as I am now.” [Politico, 3/17/2011]

Larry Klayman, the founder of the conservative media watchdog organization Judicial Watch, writes a column for conservative news blog WorldNetDaily that alleges Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is working behind the scenes to “prove” that President Barack Obama is not a US citizen, thereby ruining his chances of running for re-election in 2012 and opening the door for her own run. Clinton ran a hard-fought primary campaign against Obama in 2008. Klayman resurrects long-disproven allegations that Clinton, during her time as First Lady, had White House staffer Vince Foster murdered to keep him from exposing the raft of “crimes” Klayman says were committed by Clinton, her husband, and others in the Clinton administration. According to Klayman, Obama has always “fear[ed]” having Clinton as a political rival. He did not name her vice president: she “would only have been a stone’s throw away from the Oval Office, and the ‘mullah in chief’ obviously did not want to encourage his own ‘unfortunate accident.’” Instead, Obama “co-opt[ed]” Clinton by fobbing her off to the State Department, where “she could take the blame for his planned foreign policy of anti-Americanism, appeasement, weakness, prevarication, and hostility toward Israel and nearly all things Jewish and Christian. This would serve the dual purpose of harming her political base should she ever decide to run for president against him in 2012.” Klayman notes that Clinton has said she would not return as secretary of state if Obama wins reelection in 2012. Klayman believes Clinton is angling for the presidency in 2012, and speculates “that she herself may again be working on the so-called ‘birther’ issue, which she first raised during her 2008 presidential campaign. For if Hillary can finally obtain proof positive that President Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as he claims, then she will not have to send him on a day trip to Fort Marcy Park [the site of Foster’s suicide] to retire him as president. What could be cleaner?” [WorldNetDaily, 3/19/2011]

The Twitter post made by Fox News correspondent Todd Starnes. [Source: Media Matters]A Panama City Beach citizen uses his or her cell phone to record an incident that breaks out at a local Burger King restaurant. The conflict starts when one resident, who identifies herself as Kimesia Smith of Montgomery, Alabama, (police later learn that her real name is Nekiva Vonte Hardy) becomes angry after having to wait an apparently too-lengthy period of time for her order. Hardy leaps up on the counter and throws a charity coin jug at employees. Three of Hardy’s friends join in, throwing napkins, utensils, and trays throughout the restaurant. All four scream imprecations and abusive comments. Hardy is arrested and taken to jail on charges of simple battery, in part because an employee says Hardy pulled her hair. Explaining her actions, Hardy later says, “I don’t play no games.” Panama City Beach Police Chief Robert Harding notes that Hardy’s actions are not related to spring-break parties, saying, “She’s a 30-year-old unemployed mother of three from Montgomery, so I would surmise that she’s not a spring breaker.” Hardy is later charged with a felony count of criminal mischief and two counts of misdemeanor battery and disorderly conduct. The cell phone video of the incident becomes something of a hit on YouTube, garnering tens of thousands of views. State attorney Glenn Hess says: “While many view this video as amusing, we see it as hard evidence of serious crimes being committed. I’m quite certain the employees who were battered and terrorized by [Hardy] do not find this the least bit amusing.” Hardy has a lengthy criminal record. [WJHG-TV, 3/23/2011; Black Urban Times, 3/24/2011; New York Daily News, 3/28/2011] On March 24, Fox News reporter Todd Starnes posts a somewhat different interpretation of the incident: he links to a local news report and writes a Twitter post that reads, “Blacks riot at Burger King.” Fox Nation, the online blog for Fox News viewers, then posts the video and a brief synopsis of the story, focusing on Hardy’s “bikini-clad” state but omitting references to her race. Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters calls Starnes’s take on the incident “racist.” After Media Matters publishes its article, Starnes deletes the post. Starnes’s profile identifies him as “a contributor on FOX & Friends, Hannity, and FOX Nation.” [Media Matters, 3/24/2011; Fox News, 3/24/2011]

“Homeschool Day” in Des Moines, Iowa, sponsored by the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators, features a number of Republican luminaries such as Governor Terry Bransted (R-IA), Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Ron Paul (R-TX), and Steve King (R-IA), and former Godfathers Pizza CEO and 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain. During the festivities, Paul, an outspoken libertarian considered by many the “father” of the tea party movement, claims that the individual states can ignore or override federal laws—a tenet called “nullification.” The idea is centered in a unique interpretation of the Tenth Amendment that, when pursued to the extent that “nullifiers” or “tenthers” take it, essentially overrides the other aspects of the US Constitution in favor of states’ rights. The concept gained national notoriety in 1830, when Vice President John C. Calhoun set off the so-called “Nullification Crisis” that almost led to an armed conflict between South Carolina and the rest of the nation. It came to the fore again in 1956, when segregationists attempted to use the concept to persuade state leaders to ignore the Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, that mandated the desegregation of public schools (see March 12, 1956 and After). In recent years, it has gained popularity among some tea party-backed candidates (see October 14, 2010) and tea party pundits. Paul tells the assemblage that “in principle, nullification is proper and moral and constitutional.” He says: “The chances of us getting things changed around soon through the legislative process is not all that good. And that is why I am a strong endorser of the nullification movement, that states like this should just nullify these laws. And in principle, nullification is proper and moral and constitutional, which I believe it is, there is no reason in the world why this country can’t look at the process of, say, not only should we not belong to the United Nations, the United Nations comes down hard on us, telling us what we should do to our families and family values, education and medical care and gun rights and environmentalism. Let’s nullify what the UN tries to tell us to do as well.” Article 6 of the Constitution states that acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land… anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Founding father James Madison argued that nullification would “speedily put an end to the Union itself” by allowing federal laws to be freely ignored by states. Think Progress legal expert Ian Millhiser notes that nullification is not just unconstitutional, it is “nothing less than a plan to remove the word ‘United’ from the United States of America.” [Constitution (.org), 8/28/1830; Think Progress, 9/27/2010; Homeschooliowa (.org), 3/23/2011; Think Progress, 3/29/2011]

Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, discussing recent allegations by billionaire Donald Trump that President Obama is not a legitimate US citizen (see February 10, 2011 and March 17, 2011), tells her viewers: “Is Donald Trump a birther? Donald Trump is putting President Obama on the spot, telling him, ‘Show the birth certificate.’” Van Susteren then informs her viewers of a Trump interview on the ABC morning talk show The View where he alleged that “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t” want made public, and says: “But why is Trump doing that? Well, he tells the ladies on The View there are too many missing pieces.” [Media Matters, 3/24/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011]

On his Fox News show, host Sean Hannity says that while he believes President Obama was indeed born in the US (see July 2008, October 30, 2008, July 28, 2009, and July 29, 2009), he asks why Obama has never released his birth certificate. The Obama campaign released the “short form” certificate in 2008, the version routinely issued by Hawaii’s Department of Health (see June 13, 2008), and since then the certificate has been repeatedly shown to be valid (see June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, and July 28, 2009). Hannity is apparently referring to the “long form” certificate, which is kept on file and never released (see July 1, 2009). Hannity shows a clip from billionaire Donald Trump’s same-day visit to the ABC morning talk show The View, where Trump alleged that “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t” want made public. Several of Hannity’s guests agree that Obama “should just show it” assuming he has “nothing to hide.… It would shut everybody up and no one would care.” Hannity asks: “[I]t kinda does get a little odd here. Can’t they just produce it and we move on?” Representative Michael Burgess (R-TX) says: “Obviously there’s some value to the White House not producing it. I don’t know what that could be. This easily could have been ended. It could have been ended a couple of years ago.” [Media Matters, 3/23/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011]

Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis for government and public policy at the American Family Association (AFA), says that the US Constitution’s guarantees of freedom of religion do not apply to Muslims. In fact, Fischer writes, Muslims have no First Amendment rights at all. In a column for the conservative blog Renew America, Fischer writes: “The First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. They were making no effort to give special protections to Islam. Quite the contrary. Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy.… Our government has no obligation to allow a treasonous ideology to receive special protections in America, but this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do right now with Islam.” Fischer goes on to say that Muslims have no right to build mosques in America: “They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked if, as is in fact the case, Islam is a totalitarian ideology dedicated to the destruction of the United States.” [Raw Story, 3/24/2011; Bryan Fischer, 3/24/2011]

Conservative radio host Sean Hannity interviews Joseph Farah, the editor and primary writer for conservative news blog WorldNetDaily (WND). WND has been at the forefront of the “birther” movement against President Obama (see December 5, 2008, May 28, 2009, August 1-4, 2009, and January 18, 2011). Hannity says that it is unfair for “birthers” such as Farah to have “been beaten up so badly in the press” for pursuing the issue, and goes on to add that birthers have been “crucified and beaten up and smeared and besmirched.” Farah blames Obama and his administration for the controversy, and praises billionaire Donald Trump (see (see February 10, 2011, March 23, 2011, and March 23, 2011) for bringing the controversy to the forefront once again. He tells Hannity, “I think it’s very appropriate for Americans to begin to question if there’s a reason that Obama will not produce this simple document that, you know, we all have to produce at various points in our lives, and when the governor of Hawaii, who claims to be a lifelong friend of Obama, cannot find this document, cannot produce it, it’s natural that this becomes an increasingly big issue, an issue that I think touches on both national security.” Obama has indeed produced an authenticated copy of his birth certificate (see June 13, 2008). Farah’s reference to Governor Neil Abercrombie’s inability to “find” the original birth certificate, first proposed on WND, has since been debunked as groundless (see January 18, 2011). Farah promises that WND researcher Jerome Corsi (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, October 9, 2008, and January 18, 2011) will have “startling” research on the matter coming soon. [Media Matters, 3/24/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011] Hannity revisits the subject later this evening on his Fox News broadcast. After telling viewers that the controversy exists in part because of Obama’s fond memories of spending some of his childhood in Indonesia, Hannity tells the White House to just “show the birth certificate.… Why won’t they release the birth certificate?… Why don’t they just release it and get it over with?” [Media Matters, 3/24/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011] Hannity has brought the subject up in previous broadcasts (see March 23, 2011).

Laurie Roth, a tea party activist who co-hosts a radio talk show in Spokane, Washington (see February 2010), says she agrees with a suggestion to orchestrate and carry out a military coup d’etat against President Obama. Roth, who says she believes Obama is not an American citizen, says that Obama’s election “was not a shift to the left like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. This is a worldview clash. We are seeing a worldview clash in our White House. A man who is a closet, he’s more of a secular-type Muslim, but he’s a Muslim. He’s no Christian. We’re seeing a man who’s a socialist communist in the White House, pretending to be an American. I don’t believe, looking at all the evidence that I’ve looked at and interviewing Philip Berg (see August 21-24, 2008 and October 21, 2008) and [Leo C.] Donofrio (see October 31, 2008 and After) and Alan Keyes (see November 12, 2008 and After) and all the people that have sued him, he wasn’t even born here.” After further tarring Obama as a “socialist communist,” a “globalist,” and a “Manchurian Candidate” who wants to establish an Islamist Caliphate as a stepping stone to becoming an “international president,” Roth engages in a discussion with an audience member; the two discuss whether arresting Obama, impeaching him, or removing him via a military coup would be the best solution. Roth initially advocates impeachment, but when the audience member says Obama cannot be impeached because he is not a citizen, Roth asks for the member’s recommendation. The member responds: “By having the authority of five governors, five senators, march on the Supreme Court, who have abdicated their power and authority to simply render that he is not a legal president. And send the US Marshals to arrest him.” Roth says: “I couldn’t agree more. What we need is a move like Zelaya in Honduras. We need the military, we need somebody to do that, or impeachment, or something like you said. We need something more than we’ve had.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010; CDAPress (.com), 4/19/2011] Roth is referring to a military coup carried out in June 2009 against President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, who was kidnapped from the presidential palace and forcibly exiled to Costa Rica. The Honduran Congress used a forged letter of resignation to accept Zelaya’s removal, and named one of Zelaya’s most prominent opponents as his “successor.” [BBC, 6/28/2009]

WorldNetDaily (WND), the conservative news blog that relentlessly promotes the “birther” claims that President Obama is not a legitimate US citizen (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, Around June 28, 2010, March 23, 2011, and March 24, 2011), begins promoting a book by one of its senior authors, Jerome Corsi, titled Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is Not Eligible to Be President. The book is slated to be published in May 2011. Corsi has long accused Obama of a number of crimes and frauds, almost all of which have been disproven and debunked (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, October 9, 2008, and January 18, 2011). WND promotes the book as “[t]he result of more than two years of solid investigative research by Corsi and a team of WND reporters and editors,” and predicts it will become “a huge bestseller [that will] change the dynamics of the debate over eligibility—IF, of course, the book is not spiked by the hostile establishment media.” WND uses the promotional campaign to raise funds both for book promotion and for WND in general (the book is published by “WND Books”). Publisher Joseph Farah writes that WND readers need to help the organization “raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to air [promotional television] commercials on television networks and stations throughout the country.” The first commercial is hosted on WND’s Web site. “We need to make this the biggest publishing event of the year,” Farah says. [WorldNetDaily, 3/27/2011] The day after WND issues its press release/report, Fox Nation, the online blog of Fox News, publishes a front-page story on the book’s promotional campaign, repeating some of the WND copy and linking to the story at WND. [Fox Nation, 3/28/2011]

Comedian Bill Maher, a liberal-libertarian who hosts the political talk show Real Time on HBO, gives a performance in Dallas that includes a number of profanities and a crude sexual epithet aimed at former Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK). After insulting opponents of gay marriage and calling Democrats “p_ssies” for not actively supporting a repeal of the ban on gays in the military, he calls Palin a “c_nt,” and adds, “[T]here’s just no other word for her.” The next night, on his show, he says Palin and Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) are two “bimbos” suitable for the old television show Gilligan’s Island. “Michele Bachmann this week threw her hat into the ring, kind of. We think she’s going to be running for president for those who find Sarah Palin too intellectual,” Maher says. “If Bachmann and Palin get in, that’s two bimbos. And then there’s Mitt Romney (R-MA), a millionaire. And Newt Gingrich (R-GA), a professor. We just need a ‘Skipper’ and a ‘Buddy,’ and we’ve got ‘Gilligan’s Island.’” [Dallas Voice, 3/28/2011; CityPages, 3/28/2011] Maher will refuse to apologize. Almost a year later, he will reference the rhetoric and say he has no need to apologize because he has no sponsors to placate: “I sometimes called Sarah Palin a bad name.… I don’t have sponsors, I’m on HBO.” [Mediaite, 3/3/2012]

Appearing as a guest on the Fox News morning talk show Fox and Friends, billionaire Donald Trump continues to raise questions about President Obama’s citizenship. The show hosts reference a recent interview by Trump on the ABC morning talk show The View, in which Trump alleged that “there’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t” want made public. After showing a clip from the interview, the hosts interview Trump about his appearance on The View. He denies View co-host Whoopi Goldberg’s statement that the continuing questions about Obama’s citizenship hinge on questions about his race, states that “anyone can get” their official birth certificate merely for the asking (see June 13, 2008 and July 1, 2009), and concludes: “I didn’t think this was such a big deal, but it’s turning out to be a very big deal.… If you weren’t born in this country, you cannot be president” (see March 2-4, 2011). Trump refuses to answer a direct question as to whether Obama was born in the United States, makes a number of unproven claims about doctors and nurses at the Honolulu hospital not remembering Obama’s birth, claims that Obama family members do not know what hospital he was born at, and casts aspersions on the birth announcements published in the Honolulu newspapers in the days after his birth (see July 2008). He repeats the claim that Obama has spent “millions of dollars” defending himself from “birther” claims, a claim that will soon be debunked (see April 7-10, 2011). He even says that Hawaiian Governor Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) “should be investigated” for claiming that he remembers Obama’s birth (see December 24, 2010). Obama “could have been born outside of this country,” Trump states. [Media Matters, 3/28/2011; Media Matters, 3/28/2011]

Billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump, who for weeks has accused President Obama of not being a US citizen (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, and March 23, 2011), releases an “official” copy of his own birth certificate, allowing the conservative news blog NewsMax to post it on its Web site. “It took me one hour to get my birth certificate,” he tells a NewsMax reporter. “It’s inconceivable that, after four years of questioning, the president still hasn’t produced his birth certificate. I’m just asking President Obama to show the public his birth certificate. Why’s he making an issue out of this?… Ronald Reagan, George Bush have produced their birth certificates. Why doesn’t Obama?” However, Trump releases the same kind of “short form” certificate the Obama campaign released three years ago (see June 13, 2008). His, which shows he was born on June 14, 1946 in Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York, is a “hospital certificate of birth.” The next day, he provides an official “long form” copy of the certificate to ABC News. There are few, if any, discernible differences between the two. Trump issues the second copy along with a statement from his staffer Thuy Colayco, saying: “A ‘birth certificate’ and a ‘certificate of live birth’ are in no way the same thing, even though in some cases they use some of the same words. One officially confirms and records a newborn child’s identity and details of his or her birth, while the other only confirms that someone reported the birth of a child. Also, a ‘certificate of live birth’ is very easy to get because the standards are much lower, while a ‘birth certificate’ is only gotten through a long and detailed process wherein identity must be proved beyond any doubt. If you had only a certificate of live birth, you would not be able to get a proper passport from the Post Office or a driver’s license from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Therefore, there is very significant difference between a ‘certificate of live birth’ and a ‘birth certificate’ and one should never be confused with the other.” Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), the former governor of Minnesota and a possible 2012 candidate for president, cautions Trump not to get too involved in the “birther” conspiracy theory, telling an MSNBC reporter: “I, for one, do not believe we should be raising that issue. I think President Obama was born in the United States.” [NewsMax, 3/28/2011; ABC News, 3/29/2011; Business Insider, 3/29/2011] The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters points out that Colayco’s statement that a citizen could “not be able to get a proper passport from the Post Office or a driver’s license from the Department of Motor Vehicles” is incorrect. Both Trump and Obama could legitimately get those documents using the “short form” birth certificates as provided by the two. [Media Matters, 3/29/2011] Politico’s Ben Smith reports, somewhat facetiously, that if Trump’s personal qualifications are to be scrutinized as thoroughly as Obama’s have been, Trump is no more qualified to serve as president than Obama. “Trump’s mother, it should be noted, was born in Scotland, which is not part of the United States,” Smith writes. “His plane is registered in the Bahamas, also a foreign country. This fact pattern—along with the wave of new questions surrounding what he claims is a birth certificate—raises serious doubts about his eligibility to serve as president of the United States.” [Politico, 3/28/2011]

A screenshot from Glenn Beck’s final show. [Source: Gateway Pundit (.com)]Fox News chairman Roger Ailes negotiates the departure of one of his network’s most influential stars, talk show host Glenn Beck. Beck’s departure has been predicted by outside observers for weeks; as for Beck, he has already told Ailes, “I don’t want to do cable news anymore.” Beck has been with Fox News since October 2008, when he was hired to fill the 5:00 p.m. slot that had unsuccessfully been hosted by other conservatives such as John Gibson and Laura Ingraham. He debuted the day before President Obama’s January 2009 inauguration (see January 20-21, 2009). New York Magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman will write that Ailes hired Beck “to reenergize Fox’s audience after Obama’s election.” (In January 2009, Ailes told Beck that Fox News’s primary mission was to oppose Obama, and that Beck was a major part of that effort—see January 2009 and August 11, 2009.) Beck has been hugely successful (see March 29, 2009), “tapping deep wells of resentment and igniting them into a vast, national conflagration,” as Sherman will write. However: “The problem was that it had almost engulfed Fox itself. Beck was huge and uncontrollable, and some of Fox’s other big names seemed diminished by comparison—and were speaking up about it. Beck seemed to many to be Fox News’s id made visible, saying things—Obama is a racist (see July 27, 2009 and July 28-29, 2009), Nazi tactics are progressive tactics (see July 26, 2010 and October 3, 2010)—dredged from the right-wing subconscious. These were things that weren’t supposed to be said, even at Fox (see February 20, 2009 and March 9, 2009), and they were consuming the brand. Ailes had built his career by artfully tending the emotional undercurrents of both politics and entertainment, using them to power ratings and political careers; now they were out of his control.” Beck’s show has suffered a steep drop in ratings because of an effective boycott led by a number of progressive and civil rights groups; over 400 Fox advertisers pulled their commercials from Beck’s show. Beck has become a divisive figure among other Fox hosts, with Sean Hannity complaining about his “stardom” and Bill O’Reilly, who detests Hannity, regularly scheduling Beck as a guest on his show, further angering Hannity. And Ailes is increasingly uncomfortable with the religious content of Beck’s show (at times Beck has told his viewers that God is speaking to them through him). Beck and Ailes agree that Beck will give up his 5:00 p.m. show and return for a number of network “specials.” The talks between Beck and Ailes are not without acrimony; at one point, Ailes tells a Fox executive, “I’m just going to fire him and issue a press release.” When the network announces the departure on April 6, Beck and other Fox spokespersons are careful to avoid any sort of “public meltdown,” and ensure the avoidance of what Ailes fears most: what Sherman calls the view of “Beck’s departure… as a victory for the liberal media.” Ailes tells reporters: “We felt Glenn brought additional information, a unique perspective, a certain amount of passion and insight to the channel and he did. But that story of what’s going on and why America is in trouble today, I think he told that story as well as could be told. Whether you can just keep telling that story or not… we’re not so sure.” David Brock, founder of the progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters, says “the only surprise is that it took Fox News months to reach this decision.” And James Rucker, the chairman of ColorofChange.org, the organization behind the advertiser boycott, says, “Fox News Channel clearly understands that Beck’s increasingly erratic behavior is a liability to their ratings and their bottom line, and we are glad to see them take this action.” Beck is expected to continue his daily AM radio show and to engage in other media activities in the future. New Republic reporter James Downie observes, “In recent months, it seems, Beck’s theories became so outlandish that even conservatives—both viewers and media personalities—were having a hard time stomaching them.” Downie notes that as Beck’s show continued, Beck became caught in what he calls a “vicious circle,” having to “top himself” from week to week with ever more intricate and outlandish conspiracy theories, and more extremist rhetoric. [Associated Press, 4/6/2011; Christian Science Monitor, 4/6/2011; New York Magazine, 5/22/2011] In his own explanation for his departure, Beck compares himself to Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere, saying: “When I took this job I didn’t take it because it was going to be a career for me. Paul Revere did not get up on the horse and say, ‘I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.’ He didn’t do it. He got off the horse at some point and fought in the Revolution and then he went back to silversmithing.” [New York Daily News, 4/7/2011]

An illustration accompanying a front-page story on the online Fox Nation blog. [Source: Media Matters]Fox Nation, the online blog of Fox News, promotes Donald Trump’s recent claims that President Obama is not a US citizen and may not be a Christian (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, and March 28-29, 2011). Fox Nation publishes a story with the headline “Trump on Obama: ‘Maybe He’s a Muslim.’” The story excerpts a recent interview of Trump by Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly, who said Trump “hammer[ed] the birth certificate” during a recent appearance on the ABC morning talk show The View. O’Reilly says his own investigative staffers determined that two birth announcements placed in Honolulu newspapers the week of Obama’s birth proved to his satisfaction that Obama was indeed born in the US and therefore is a US citizen (see July 2008). “There couldn’t have been a sophisticated—what is he, Baby Jesus?—there was a sophisticated conspiracy to smuggle this baby back into the country? So I just dismissed it. But you made a big deal of it.” Trump explains that those announcements could have been planted by Obama supporters bent on fraud, and even claims, “I have never seen” a birth announcement in a newspaper. “Really?” O’Reilly responds. “They are common.… But why is this important to you?” Trump says that because he doubts Obama is a citizen, Obama’s status as president is doubtful. He goes on to defend “birthers” as “just really quality people that just want the truth,” and lambasts media figures who make “birthers” “afraid to talk about this subject. They are afraid to confront you or anybody about this subject.” He concludes: “People have birth certificates. He doesn’t have a birth certificate (see June 13, 2008). He may have one but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.” [Media Matters, 3/30/2011; Fox Nation, 3/30/2011] O’Reilly has been critical of the so-called “birthers” before (see July 29, 2009).

Maine State Representative David Burns (R-Whiting) introduces a child labor bill that would allow employers to pay workers under 20 years of age a $5.25/hour “training wage.” Such a law would go against Maine’s minimum wage of $7.50/hour. Critics say that Burns’s proposal devalues young workers, and takes money out of the hands of laborers and gives it to business. Burns’s proposal is part of a larger package he presents, LD 1346, which would make a number of changes to Maine’s child labor laws, including lifting restrictions that limit the maximum hours a minor over the age of 16 can work during school days. Burns calls his legislation “empowering” for young workers, and says employers would be more apt to hire minors if they could pay them the smaller wage. “An employer’s got to have employees, so they can decide what they want to pay,” he says. “The student wants to have a job, and they can decide what they’re willing to work for.” Maine Democrats and labor advocates have come out strongly against the bill. Maine Democratic Party chairman Ben Grant accuses Burns of “trying to erase the progress of child labor laws.” The bill, if passed, would roll back wages earned by teens to a point not seen since the 1980s. Laura Harper of the Maine Women’s Lobby says the bill would undermine efforts to “teach teens the value of hard work.” Instead, she says, the bill “sends them the message that they aren’t valued. That doesn’t fit with Maine values. At a time when business leaders recognize that student achievement is critical to Maine’s economic growth, this bill will shortchange students and impair Maine’s economic success.” She cites a 2000 US Department of Labor study that showed “working a limited number of hours in the junior and senior years of high school has a positive effect on educational attainment.” Representative Timothy Driscoll (D-Westbrook) says the bill, and another measure in Maine’s Senate, would result in “kids working more hours during the school week and making less money.” [Bangor Daily News, 3/30/2011] Think Progress reporter Ian Millhiser observes: “Burns’s bill is particularly insidious, because it directly encourages employers to hire children or teenagers instead of adult workers. Because workers under 20 could be paid less than adults under this GOP proposal, minimum wage workers throughout Maine would likely receive a pink slip as their 20th birthday present so that their boss could replace them with someone younger and cheaper.” Millhiser notes that Burns’s proposal is just one of a number efforts that would dramatically roll back child labor restrictions (see January 4, 2011 and February 14, 2011). [Think Progress, 3/31/2011] The Maine House Labor Committee will reject the bill on a unanimous vote that will come without discussion. Burns will not be present for the vote. Another proposal loosening work restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds is pending in the Maine Senate. [Lewiston/Auburn Sun Journal, 5/6/2011]

US Representative Louis Gohmert (R-TX) says on the floor of the House that President Obama is trying to “deplete the military” so he can create his own private army through a provision in the recently passed health care reform legislation. Gohmert, railing against health care reform, says: “It’s a bad bill. And then when you find out that the prior Congress not only passed that 2,800-page bill with all kinds of things in it, including a new president’s commissioned officer corps and non-commissioned officer corps. Do we really need that? I wondered when I read that in the bill. But then when you find out we’re being sent to Libya to use our treasure and American lives there, maybe there’s intention to so deplete the military that we’re going to need that presidential reserve officer commissioned corps and non-commissioned corps that the president can call up on a moment’s notice involuntarily, according to the Obamacare bill.” Gohmert is referring to debunked claims made in a recent spate of chain emails that Obama can create a “private army” under the new health care legislation (see April 7, 2010). The legislation did create the “Ready Reserve Corps,” an arm of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, but its purpose is to help the government more effectively respond to emergencies and natural disasters. [Political Correction, 3/31/2011] Gohmert has expressed a number of strong views regarding health care reform in the past (see July 16, 2009 and July 24, 2009).

MSNBC news hosts Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd conduct a telephone interview with billionaire entrepeneur and television host Donald Trump, who uses the opportunity to state his belief that President Obama “was not born in this country” (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, and March 28-29, 2011). Guthrie and Todd laugh at Trump’s statement, and Todd calls Trump’s theory “an incredible conspiracy.” However, when Fox Nation, the online blog of Fox News, posts the video of the interview, it headlines the video, “Trump Thumps MSNBC Hosts on Obama’s Birth Certificate.” [Media Matters, 4/1/2011; Fox Nation, 4/1/2011]

Leonard Pitts Jr. [Source: SourceMedia (.net)]Leonard Pitts Jr., an African-American columnist for the Miami Herald, writes that the ongoing “birther” conspiracy theory surrounding President Obama’s citizenship, recently re-energized by billionaire Donald Trump (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, and April 1, 2011), is, at its core, driven by racial prejudice. “[I]t is time to call this birther nonsense what it is,” he writes, “not just claptrap, but profoundly racist claptrap.” Pitts goes on: “And spare me the e-mails where you soliloquize like Hamlet, the back of your hand pressed to your forehead, eyes turned heavenward, as you moan how it is impossible to criticize this president without being accused of racism. Criticize him to your heart’s content. Give him hell over Libya. Blast him about Guantanamo. Knock him silly on health care reform. He is the president; taking abuse is part of his job description. But this ongoing birther garbage, like the ongoing controversy about his supposed secret Muslim identity (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008), is not about criticism. It is not about what he has done but, rather, what he is.” The “Muslim” and “birther” controversies are “dog whistle” issues, he writes, that “provide euphemistic cover for those who want to express alarm over the raw newness of him, the sweeping demographic changes he represents… without appearing uncouth enough to do so.” He concludes: “Frankly, I wish Trump and his fellow birthers would just go ahead and call Obama an N-word. Yes, it would be reprehensible and offensive. But it would be a damn sight more honest, too.” [Miami Herald, 4/1/2011]

New York Times columnist Gail Collins lambasts billionaire television host Donald Trump, both for his media-savvy flirtation with the 2012 Republican presidential candidacy and for his support of the “birther” controversy (see February 10, 2011, March 17, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 23, 2011, March 28, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, March 30, 2011, April 1, 2011, and April 1, 2011). Collins calls Trump’s advocacy of “birtherism” “loony,” and implies he chose it to steal a march over a lackluster field of more “traditional” potential candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. She derides his business “success,” noting his most recent success is as the host of a television reality show, his bankruptcy of a once-profitable line of casinos, and his loss of millions on opulent high-rise apartment buildings. She notes that after she wrote an earlier column mocking Trump’s financial failures, he retorted by sending her a copy of the column with her picture circled and the words “The Face of a Dog!” written over it. Trump is not a serious candidate, she writes; he is doing what he does best: self-promotion, “product-placement, and personal aggrandizement.” [New York Times, 4/1/2011] A week later, Trump responds with a letter to the editor. He accuses Collins of having written “nasty and derogatory articles about me” in the past, and says he respects her for being able to survive so long “with so little talent.” He lambasts her for deriding his advocacy of “birtherism,” citing the “very large segment of our society” who believe that President Obama is not a legitimate American citizen, and cites as “proof” the long-debunked claim that Obama’s “grandmother from Kenya” told a caller that she saw Obama being born in a Kenyan hospital (see October 16, 2008 and After). Trump says the birth certificate Obama has produced (see June 13, 2008) is legally invalid (see August 21, 2008 and October 30, 2008), and claims no records exist in Hawaii’s state government of Obama’s birth record. He calls the term “birther” a “derogatory” label, and says had similar claims been raised about President Bush or any other president, “they would never have been allowed to attain office, or would have been thrown out of office very quickly.” Trump alleges that “the press protects President Obama beyond anything or anyone I have ever seen,” and says: “What they don’t realize is that if he was not born in the United States, they would have uncovered the greatest ‘scam’ in the history of our country. In other words, they would become the hottest writer since Watergate, or beyond. Open your eyes, Gail, there’s at least a good chance that Barack Hussein Obama has made mincemeat out of our great and cherished Constitution!” [New York Times, 4/8/2011]

Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis for government and public policy at the American Family Association (AFA), says that the government should stop spending any money at all on anti-poverty efforts because such spending encourages African-Americans to “rut like rabbits.” In a blog post on the AFA Web site titled “Poverty has won,” Fischer says welfare and anti-poverty programs have done nothing but led to the destruction of marriage and harmed African-American children. “We have spent over $16 trillion fighting the war on poverty, and it’s time to run up the white flag of surrender,” he writes. “Poverty has won.” In the post, Fischer says that welfare has destroyed the African-American family by providing incentives for fornication instead of marriage. “It’s no wonder we are now awash in the disastrous social consequences of people who rut like rabbits,” he writes. “Welfare has destroyed the African-American family by telling young black women that husbands and fathers are unnecessary and obsolete. Welfare has subsidized illegitimacy by offering financial rewards to women who have more children out of wedlock.” In previous statements on the AFA blog and on his talk radio show, Fischer has claimed that WikiLeaks is about nothing more than gays in the military (see December 7, 2010), that President Obama wants to give the entire North American landmass to Native Americans (see December 22, 2010), and the constitutional right to freedom of religion does not apply to Muslims (see March 24, 2011). Fischer has had as guests on his show potential Republican presidential candidates Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Haley Barbour. [Raw Story, 4/5/2011; Right Wing Watch, 4/5/2011] The link that originally went to the “Poverty has won” post subsequently goes to an entirely different post; the post Fischer originally made subsequently seems to have been deleted. [Bryan Fischer, 4/5/2011]

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